summer I felt it
more than ever.

The late spring had ruined a large part of the berry
crop, and the consequence was that, wherever there was a patch with any
fruit on it, bears were sure to find it out. There was one small
sheltered patch which I knew, where the fruit had nearly all survived
the frosts. I was there one evening, when, not far from me, out of the
woods came another bear of about my size. I liked her the moment I
obtained a good view of her. She saw me, and sat up and looked at me
amicably.

I had never tried to make love before, but I knew what was the right
thing to do; so I approached her slowly, walking sideways, rubbing
my nose on the ground, and mumbling into the grass to tell her how
much I admired her. She responded in the correct way, by rolling on
the ground. So I continued to approach her, and I cannot have been
more than five or six yards away, when out of the bushes behind her,
to my astonishment, came a he-bear. He growled at me, and began to
sniff around at the bushes, to show that he was entirely ready to
fight if I wanted to. And of course I wanted to. I probably should
have wanted to in any circumstances, but when the she-bear showed
that she liked me better than him, by growling at him, I would not
have gone away, without fighting for her, for all the berries and
honey in the world. One of the most momentous crisis in my life had
come, and, as all such things do, had come quite unexpectedly.

He was as much in earnest as I, and for a minute we sidled round
growling over our shoulders, and each measuring the other. There was
little to choose between us, for, if I was a shade the taller, he was a
year older than I, and undoubtedly the heavier and thicker. In fighting
all other animals except those of his kind, a bear's natural weapons are
his paws, with one blow of which he can crush a small animal, and either
stun or break the neck of a larger one. But he cannot do any one of
these three things to another bear as big as himself, and only if one
bear is markedly bigger than the other can he hope to reach his head, so
as either to tear his face or give him such a blow as will daze him and
render him incapable of going on fighting. A very much larger bear can
beat down the smaller one's arms, and rain such a shower of blows upon
him as will convince him at once that he is overmatched, and make him
turn tail and run. When two are evenly matched, however, the first
interchange of blows wi