that he was heavy enough to lift my
weight with his stout lever. I stole along so as to look behind a great
tree--and there on the other log, not twenty feet away, a big bear was
standing, twisting himself uneasily, trying to decide whether to go on
or go back on his unstable footing.

He discovered me at the instant that my face appeared behind the tree.
Such surprise, such wonder I have seldom seen in an animal's face. For a
long moment he met my eyes steadily with his. Then he began to twist
again, while the logs rocked up and down. Again he looked at the strange
animal on the other log; but the face behind the tree had not moved nor
changed; the eyes looked steadily into his. With a startled movement he
plunged off into the underbrush, and but for a swift grip on a branch
the sudden lurch would have sent me off backward among the rocks. As he
jumped I heard a swift flutter of wings. I followed it timidly, not
knowing where the bear was, and in a moment I had the second partridge
stowed away comfortably with his brother in my hunting shirt.

The rest of the flock had scattered widely by this time. I found one or
two and followed them; but they dodged away into the thick alders, where
I could not find their heads quick enough with my rifle sight. After a
vain, hasty shot or two I went back to my fishing.

Woods and lake were soon quiet again. The trout had stopped rising, in
one of their sudden moods. A vast silence brooded over the place,
unbroken by any buzz of my noisy reel, and the twilight shadows were
growing deeper and longer, when the soft, gliding, questioning chatter
of partridges came floating out of the alders. The leader was there, in
the thickest tangle--I had learned in an hour to recognize his peculiar
_Prut, prut_--and from the hillside and the alder swamp and the big
evergreens his scattered flock were answering; here a _kwit_, and there
a _prut_, and beyond a swift burr of wings, all drawing closer and
closer together.

I had still a third partridge to get for my own hungry flock; so I stole
swiftly back into the alder swamp. There I found a little game path and
crept along it on hands and knees, drawing cautiously near to the
leader's continued calling.

[Illustration: "THEY WOULD TURN THEIR HEADS AND LISTEN INTENTLY"]

In the midst of a thicket of low black alders, surrounded by a perfect
hedge of bushes, I found him at last. He was on the lower end of a
fallen log, gliding rapidly up and do