ting of men's voices came to our ears. We wandered round the
outskirts of the town till it was daylight, and then drew back into the
hills and lay down again, very sad and hungry--for we had hardly thought
of food--and very lonesome.

Kahwa, we felt sure, was somewhere among those houses in the town. But
that was little comfort to us. And all the time we wondered what man
wanted with her, and why he could not have left us to be happy, as we
had been before he came.

CHAPTER VI.

LIFE IN CAMP.

One of the results of Kahwa's disappearance was to make me much more
solitary than I had ever been before, not merely because I did not have
her to play with, but now, for the first time, I took to wandering on
excursions by myself. And these excursions all had one object:--to find
Kahwa.

For some days after her capture we waited about the outskirts of the
town nearly all night long; but on the third or fourth morning father
made up his mind that it was useless, and, though mother persuaded him
not to abandon the search for another night or two, he insisted after
that on giving up and returning to the neighborhood where we had been
living since the fire. So we turned our backs upon the town, and, for my
part very reluctantly, went home.

The moon was not yet much past the full, and I can remember now how the
berry-patch looked that night as we passed it, lying white and shining
in the moonlight. We saw no other bears at it, and did not stop, but
kept under the trees round the edges, and went on to our favorite
resting-place, where, a few hundred yards from the river, a couple of
huge trees had at some time been blown down. Round their great trunks as
they lay on the ground, young trees and a mass of elder-bushes and other
brushwood had sprung up, making a dense thicket. The two logs lay side
by side, and in between them, with the tangle of bushes all round and
the branches of the other trees overhead, there was a complete and
impenetrable shelter.

We had used this place so much that a regular path was worn to it
through the bushes. This night as we came near we saw recent prints of a
bear's feet on the path, and the bear that made them was evidently a big
one. From the way father growled when he saw them, I think he guessed at
once whose feet they were. I know that I had my suspicions--suspicions
which soon proved to be correct.

During our absence our enemy, the surly bear that I have spoken of, had
taken it