t home, and would, in all probability, be back soon after
it was light. So I stayed in the immediate neighborhood, and before
sunrise they returned. My mother was glad to see me, but I do not think
I can say as much for my father. I told them where I had been, and of my
visits to the town, and of poor Kahwa's death; and though at the time
father did not seem to pay much attention to what I said, next day he
suggested that we should move farther away from the neighborhood of men.

The following afternoon we started, making our way back along the stream
by which we had descended, and soon finding ourselves once more in the
region that had been swept by fire. It was still desolate, but the two
months that had passed had made a wonderful difference. It was covered
by the bright red flowers of a tall plant standing nearly as high as a
bear's head, which shoots up all over the charred soil whenever a tract
of forest is burned. Other undergrowth may come up in the following
spring, but for the first year nothing appears except the red
"fireweed," and that grows so thickly that the burnt wood is a blaze of
color, out of which the blackened trunks of the old trees stand up naked
and gaunt.

We passed several houses of men by the waterside, and gave them a wide
berth. We learned from the beavers and the ospreys that a number of men
had gone up the stream during the summer, and few had come back, so that
now there must be many more of them in the district swept by the fire
than there had been before. We did not wish to live in the burnt
country, however, because there was little food to be found there, and
under the fireweed the ground was still covered with a layer of the
bitter black stuff, which, on being disturbed, got into one's throat and
eyes and nostrils. So we turned southwards along the edge of the track
of the fire, and soon found ourselves in a country that was entirely new
to us, though differing little in general appearance from the other
places with which we were familiar--the same unbroken succession of
hills and gulches covered with the dense growth of good forest trees. It
was, in fact, bears' country; and in it we felt at home.

For the most part we travelled in the morning and evening; but the
summer was gone now, and on the higher mountains it was sometimes
bitterly cold, so we often kept on moving all day. We were not going
anywhere in particular: only endeavoring to get away from man, and, if
possible, to