en he
glided into the brush and was lost to sight and hearing.

He was so close that I scarcely dared breathe as I waited, expecting
him to come out farther down the shore. Five minutes passed without
the slightest sound to indicate his whereabouts, though I was
listening intently in the dead hush that was on the lake. All the
while I smelled him strongly. One can smell a bear almost as far as he
can a deer, though the scent does not cling so long to the underbrush.

A bush swayed slightly below where he had disappeared. I was watching
it closely when some sudden warning--I know not what, for I did not
hear but only felt it--made me turn my head quickly. There, not six
feet away, a huge head and shoulders were thrust out of the bushes on
the bank, and a pair of gleaming eyes were peering intently down upon
me in the grass. He had been watching me at arm's length probably two
or three minutes. Had a muscle moved in all that time, I have no doubt
that he would have sprung upon me. As it was, who can say what was
passing behind that curious, half-puzzled, half-savage gleam in his
eyes?

[Illustration]

He drew quickly back as a sudden movement on my part threw the rifle
into position. A few minutes later I heard the snap of a rotten twig
some distance away. Not another sound told of his presence till he
broke out onto the shore, fifty yards above, and went steadily on his
way up the lake.

* * * * *

Mooween is something of a humorist in his own way. When not hungry he
will go out of his way to frighten a bullfrog away from his sun-bath
on the shore, for no other purpose, evidently, than just to see him
jump. Watching him thus amusing himself one afternoon, I was immensely
entertained by seeing him turn his head to one side, and wrinkle his
eyebrows, as each successive frog said _ke'dunk_, and went splashing
away over the lily pads.

A pair of cubs are playful as young foxes, while their extreme
awkwardness makes them a dozen times more comical. Simmo, my Indian
guide, tells me that the cubs will sometimes run away and hide when
they hear the mother bear returning. No amount of coaxing or of
anxious fear on her part will bring them back, till she searches
diligently to find them.

Once only have I had opportunity to see the young at play. There were
two of them, nearly full-grown, with the mother. The most curious
thing was to see them stand up on their hind legs and cuff each othe