hen made
no sound but a spitting growl as it bit and ripped. From the first the
brindled mongrel had no ghost of a chance; and the struggle was over
in three minutes. As the cook, astonished by the sudden uproar, came
rushing axe in hand from his shanty, the wildcat sprang away with a
snarl and bounded into the cover of the nearest spruce bushes. He was
none the worse save for a deep and bleeding gash down his
fore-shoulder, where his victim had gained a moment's grip. But the
dog was so cruelly mauled that the woodsman could do nothing but
compassionately knock him on the head with the axe which he had
brought to the rescue.

Savage from the struggle, and elated from his vengeance, the wildcat
with no further hesitation turned his back upon his old haunts,
crossed the Guimic by great leaps from rock to rock, and set southward
toward the wooded slopes and valleys overlooked by the ragged crest of
Ringwaak.

The indignant exile, journeying so boldly to confront the peril of
which he had no suspicion or forewarning, belonged to a species
confined to the forests of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia or the
neighbourhood of their boundaries. He was a giant cousin of the common
wildcat, and known to the few naturalists who had succeeded in
differentiating and classifying his species as _Lynx Gigas_. In weight
and stature he was, if anything, more than the peer of his other and
more distant cousin, the savage Canada lynx. The cook of the camp, in
telling his comrades about the fate of the dog, spoke of the great
wildcat as a "catamount," to distinguish him from the common cat of
the woods. These same woodsmen, had they seen the lynx who ruled on
Ringwaak Hill, would have called him a "lucerfee," while any
Madawaska Frenchman in their company would have dubbed him _loup
cervier_. Either catamount or lucerfee was respectfully regarded by
the woodsmen.

For an hour the great cat journeyed on, wary and stealthy from habit
rather than intention, as he was neither hunting for prey nor avoiding
enemies. But when he found himself in strange woods--a gloomy cedar
swamp, dotted with dry hardwood knolls like islands--with true cat
instinct he delayed his journey to look about him and investigate.
Prowling from side to side, and sniffing and peering, he presently
found something that he was not looking for. In a hollow beneath a
granite boulder, behind the roots of two gnarled old cedars, he came
upon two glossy black bear cubs, fast asl