he is. Down came the club with a sweep to have felled an
ox. There was a flash from Mooween's paw; the club spun away into the
woods; and Simmo just escaped a fearful return blow by dropping to
the ground and rolling out of reach, leaving his cap in Mooween's
claws. A wink later, and his scalp would have hung there instead.

In the mating season, when three or four bears often roam the woods
together in fighting humor, Mooween uses a curious kind of challenge.
Rising on his hind legs against a big fir or spruce, he tears the bark
with his claws as high as he can reach on either side. Then placing
his back against the trunk, he turns his head and bites into the tree
with his long canine teeth, tearing out a mouthful of the wood. That
is to let all rivals know just how big a bear he is.

The next bear that comes along, seeking perhaps to win the mate of his
rival and following her trail, sees the challenge and measures his
height and reach in the same way, against the same tree. If he can
bite as high, or higher, he keeps on, and a terrible fight is sure to
follow. But if, with his best endeavors, his marks fall short of the
deep scars above, he prudently withdraws, and leaves it to a bigger
bear to risk an encounter.

In the wilderness one occasionally finds a tree on which three or four
bears have thus left their challenge. Sometimes all the bears in a
neighborhood seem to have left their records in the same place. I
remember well one such tree, a big fir, by a lonely little beaver
pond, where the separate challenges had become indistinguishable on
the torn bark. The freshest marks here were those of a long-limbed old
ranger--a monster he must have been--with a clear reach of a foot
above his nearest rival. Evidently no other bear had cared to try
after such a record.

Once, in the mating season, I discovered quite by accident that
Mooween can be called, like a hawk or a moose, or indeed any other
wild creature, if one but knows how. It was in New Brunswick, where I
was camped on a wild forest river. At midnight I was back at a little
opening in the woods, watching some hares at play in the bright
moonlight. When they had run away, I called a wood-mouse out from his
den under a stump; and then a big brown owl from across the
river--which almost scared the life out of my poor little wood-mouse.
Suddenly a strange cry sounded far back on the mountain. I listened
curiously, then imitated the cry, in the hope of hearin