Frosts by this time were
binding swale and pool. Ice was forming far out from the edges of the
lake. The first snows had fallen and the great snows were threatening.
And the little she-bear was getting ready to creep into a hole and
curl up for her winter's sleep. She no longer wanted company,--not
even the company of this splendid, black comrade, whose collar had so
filled her with admiration.

When, at length, the winter of the north had fairly settled down upon
the Squatooks, the exile's ribs were well encased in fat. But that
fortunate condition was not to last long. When the giant winds, laden
with snow and Arctic cold, thundered and shrieked about the peak of
Sugar Loaf, and in the loud darkness strange shapes of drift rode down
the blast, he slept snugly enough in the narrow depths of his den. But
the essential winter lore of his kind he had not learned. He had not
learned to sleep away the time of storm and famine. As for instinct,
it failed him altogether in this emergency. During his five years of
life with the circus, he had had no chance to gratify his winter
drowsiness, and gradually the power to hibernate had passed away from
him. The loss was irremediable. By this one deprivation his contact
with man had ruined him for the life of nature.

When man has snatched away from Nature one of her wild children,
Nature, merciless in her resentments, is apt to say, "Keep him! He is
none of mine!" And if the alien, his heart aching for his own,
insists upon returning, Nature turns a face of stone against him.

Unskilled in hunting as he was, and unable to sleep, the bear was soon
driven to extremes. At rare intervals he succeeded in capturing a
rabbit. Once or twice, after a fierce frost had followed a wet sleet
storm, he had climbed trees and found dead birds frozen to their
perches. But most of the time he had nothing but starvation rations of
wood-ants and buds. In the course of a few weeks he was lean as a
heron, and his collar hung loose in his fur. He was growing to hate
the icy and glittering desolation,--and, as he had once longed for an
untried freedom, now he longed for the companionship of men.

He was now wandering far afield in his daily quest for food, sometimes
not returning for three or four days at a time. Once, on an excursion
over into the Madawaska Valley, he came upon a deadfall temptingly
baited with pork. He rushed forward ravenously to snatch the
bait,--but just in time that scent called