rocky hollows. Under the snow and under the rotting patches of ice,
innumerable small streams were everywhere hurrying to swell the still
ice-fettered flood of the river, the Big Fork, whose roomy valley lay
about a half-mile eastward through the woods. Every now and then, when
a soft gust drew up from the south, it bore with it a heavy roar, a
noise as of muffled and tremendous trampling, the voice of the Big
Fork Falls thundering out from under their decaying lid of ice. The
Falls were the only thing which the black bear really feared. Often as
he had visited them, to catch wounded fish in the ominous eddies at
their foot, he could never look at their terrific plunge without a
certain awed dilation of his eyes, a certain shrinking at his heart.
Perhaps by reason of some association of his cubhood, some imminent
peril and narrow escape at the age when his senses were most
impressionable, in all his five years of life the Falls had never
become a commonplace to him. And even now, while questing noiselessly
and restlessly for food, he rarely failed to pay the tribute of an
instinctive, unconscious turn of head whenever that portentous voice
came up upon the wind.

Prowling hither and thither among the great ragged trunks, peering and
sniffing and listening, the bear suddenly caught the sound of small
claws on wood. The sound came apparently from within the trunk of a
huge maple, close at hand. Leaning his head to one side, he listened
intently, his ears cocked, eager as a child listening to a watch.
There was, indeed, something half childish in the attitude of the huge
figure, strangely belying the ferocity in his heart. Yes, the sound
came, unmistakably, from within the trunk. He nosed the bark warily.
There was no opening; and the bark was firm. He stole to the other
side of the tree, his head craftily outstretched and reaching around
far before him.

The situation was clear to him at once,--and his hungry muzzle jammed
itself into the entrance to a chipmunk's hole. The maple-tree was
dead, and partly decayed, up one side of the trunk. All his craft
forgotten on the instant, the bear sniffed and snorted and drew loud,
fierce breaths, as if he thought to suck the little furry tenant forth
by inhalation. The live, warm smell that came from the hole was
deliciously tantalizing to his appetite. The hole, however, was barely
big enough to admit the tip of his black snout, so he presently gave
over his foolish sniffings,