ld outside
his den. Hitherto he had but played about his doorway.

When the little fellow had somewhat recovered from his first
bewilderment, the old bear moved more rapidly, leading him toward a
swampy, grassy pocket, where she thought there might be roots to dig.
The way was steep, winding down between rocks and stunted trees and
tangles of thick shrubbery, with here and there a black-green spur of
the fir forests thrust up tentatively from the lower slopes. Now and
again it led across a naked shoulder of the mountain, revealing, far
down, a landscape of dark, wide stretching, bluish woods, with
desolate, glimmering lakes strung on a thread of winding river. When
these vast spaces of emptiness opened suddenly upon his baby eyes, the
cub whimpered and drew closer to his mother. The swimming deeps of air
daunted him.

Presently, as the two continued their slow journey, the mother bear's
nostrils caught a new savour. She stopped, lifted her snout, and
tested the wind discriminatingly. It was a smell she had encountered
once before, coming from the door of a lumber camp. Well she
remembered the deliciousness of the lump of fat bacon which she had
succeeded in purloining while the cook was out getting water. Her
thin, red tongue licked her lips at that memory, and, without
hesitation, she turned up the side trail whence came the luring scent.
The cub had to stir his little legs to keep pace with her, but he felt
that something interesting was in the wind, and did his best.

A turn around a thick clump of juniper, and there was the source of
the savour. It looked pleasantly familiar to the old bear, that lump
of fat bacon. It was stuck on the end of a pointed stick, just under a
sort of slanting roof of logs, which, in a way, reminded her of the
lumbermen's cabin. The cabin had done her no harm, and she inferred
that the structure before her was equally harmless. Nevertheless, the
man smell, not quite overpowered by the fragrance of the bacon, lurked
about it; and all the works of man she viewed with suspicion. She
snatched hastily at the prize, turning to jump away even as she did
so.

But the bacon seemed to be fastened to the stick. She gave it an
impatient pull,--and it yielded suddenly. At that same instant, while
her eyes twinkled with elation, that roof of massive logs came
crashing down.

It fell across her back. Weighted as it was with heavy stones, it
crushed the life out of her in a second. There was a cou