d at me in a way that made me stand off while he and
mother finished the fungi and the beetles. After that I kept my
distance. It did not matter much, for I was well able to forage for
myself. But I would have preferred to have him kinder. His unkindness,
however, did not prevent him from taking for himself anything which he
wanted that I had found. One day I came across some honey, from which he
promptly drove me away, and I had to look on while he and mother shared
the feast between them.

At last we came to a stream where the beavers told us that no man had
been seen in the time of any member of their colony then living. The
stream, which was here wide enough to be a river, came from the west,
and for two or three days we followed it down eastwards, and found no
trace or news of man; so we turned back up it again--back past the place
where we had first struck it--and on along its course for another day's
journey into the mountains. It was, perhaps, too much to hope that we
had lighted on a place where man would never come; but at least we knew
that for a distance of a week's travelling in all directions he never
yet had been, and it might be many years before he came. Meanwhile we
should have a chance to live our lives in peace.

Here we stayed, moving about very little, and feeding as much as we
could; for winter was coming on, and a bear likes to be fat and well fed
before his long sleep. It rained a good deal now, as it always does in
the mountains in the late autumn, and as a general rule the woods were
full of mist all day, in which we went about tearing the roots out of
the soft earth, eating the late blueberries where we could find them,
and the cranberries and the elderberries, which were ripe on the bushes,
now and then coming across a clump of nut-trees, and once in a while,
the greatest of all treats, revelling in a feast of honey.

One morning, after a cold and stormy night, we saw that the tops of the
highest mountains were covered with snow. It might be a week or two yet
before the snow fell over the country as a whole, or it might be only a
day or two; for the wind was blowing from the north, biting cold, and
making us feel numb and drowsy. So my father decided that it was time to
make our homes for the winter. He had already fixed upon a spot where a
tree had fallen and torn out its roots, making a cave well shut in on
two sides, and blocked on a third by another fallen log; and here,
without thinki