very fond of salmon, but it was rarely, except on such
occasions as this, that they had a chance to gratify their taste.

After perhaps a week of this southward journeying, the travellers
found themselves one night at the head of a little creek where the
tide lapped pleasantly on a smooth, sandy beach. They were already
getting into milder weather, and here, a half mile inland, there was
no wind. The sky was overcast, and the seals lay in contented security
along the edge of the water. The blacker darkness of a fir forest came
down to within perhaps fifty paces of their resting-place. But they
had no anxieties. The only creatures that they had learned to fear on
shore besides man were the polar bears; and they knew they were now
well south of that deadly hunter's range. As for eagles, they did not
hunt at night; and, moreover, they were a terror only in the
woolly-coated, baby stage of a seal's existence.

But it often enough happens that wild animals, no less than human
beings, may be ignorant of something which their health requires them
to know. There was another bear in Labrador--a smallish, rusty-coated,
broad-headed, crafty cousin of the ordinary American black bear. And
one of these, who had acquired a taste for seal, along with some
cleverness in gratifying that taste, had his headquarters, as it
chanced, in that near-neighboring fir wood.

The Pup lay crowded in snugly between his two mothers. He liked the
warmth of being crowded; for the light breeze, drawing up from the
water, was sharp with frost. There is such a thing, however, as being
just a little too crowded, and presently, waking up with a protest, he
pushed and wriggled to get more space. As he did so, he raised his
head. His keen young eyes fell upon a black something a little blacker
than the surrounding gloom.

The black something was up the slope halfway between the water and the
wood. It looked like a mass of rock. But the Pup had a vague feeling
that there had been no rock thereabouts when he went to sleep. A
thrill of apprehension went up and down his spine, raising the
stiffish hairs along his neck. Staring with all his eyes through the
dimness, he presently saw the black shape move. Yes, it was drawing
nearer. With a shrill little bark of terror he gave the alarm, at the
same time struggling free and hurling himself toward the water.

In that same instant the bear rushed, coming down the slope as it were
in one plunging jump. The seals,