. The bear's awkward position and
unprotected hind quarters evidently appealed to him. He ambled
forward, reared half playfully, half vindictively, and gave the bear a
savage prodding with the keen tips of his antlers. Then he bounded
back some eight or ten paces, and waited, while the bear slid abruptly
to the ground with a flat grunt of fury.

Sam Coxen, twisting with silent laughter, nearly fell out of his
fir-tree.

The bear had now no room left for any remembrance of the man. He was
in a perfect ecstasy of rage at the insolence of the buck, and rushed
upon him like a cyclone. Against that irresistible charge the buck had
no thought of making stand. Just in the nick of time he sprang aside
in a bound that carried him a full thirty feet. Another such, another
and another, and then he went capering off frivolously down the woody
aisles, while the bear lumbered impotently after him.

Before they were out of sight Sam Coxen slid down from his tree and
made all haste over the fence. In the open field he felt more at ease,
knowing he could outrun the bear, in case of need. But he stopped long
enough to pick up the gun.

Then, with one pathetic glance at the ruined cabbages, he strode
hastily on up the hill, glancing backward from time to time to assure
himself that neither of his late antagonists was returning to the
attack.

In the Deep of the Snow

I

Around the little log cabin in the clearing the snow lay nearly four
feet deep. It loaded the roof. It buried the low, broad, log barn
almost to the eaves. It whitely fenced in the trodden, chip-littered,
straw-strewn space of the yard which lay between the barn and the
cabin. It heaped itself fantastically, in mounds and domes and
pillars, over the stumps that dotted the raw, young clearing. It clung
densely on the drooping branches of the fir and spruce and hemlock. It
mantled in a kind of breathless, expectant silence the solitude of the
wilderness world.

Dave Patton, pushing down the blankets and the many-coloured patchwork
quilt, lifted himself on one elbow and looked at the pale face of his
young wife. She was sleeping. He slipped noiselessly out of the bunk,
lightly pulled up the coverings again, and hurriedly drew on two pairs
of heavy, home-knit socks of rough wool. The cabin was filled with the
grey light of earliest dawn, and with a biting cold that made the
woodsman's hardy fingers ache. Stepping softly as a cat over the rude
plank floor,