ift fate, to Barnes's haggard eyes,
seemed an analogue in little to his own.

But it was not in the woodsman's fibre to acknowledge himself actually
beaten, either by man or fate, so long as there remained a spark in
his brain to keep his will alive. He presently began searching with
his eyes among the branches of the poplar sapling for one stout enough
to serve him as a lever. With the right kind of a stick in his hand,
he told himself, he might manage to pry apart the jaws of the trap and
get his foot free. At last his choice settled upon a branch that he
thought would serve his turn. He was just about to reach up and break
it off, when a slight crackling in the underbrush across the stream
caught his ear.

His woodsman's instinct kept him motionless as he turned his eyes to
the spot. In the thick leafage there was a swaying, which moved down
along the bank, but he could not see what was causing it. Softly he
drew over a leafy branch of the sapling till it made him a perfect
screen, then he peered up the channel to find out what the unseen
wayfarer was following.

A huge salmon, battered and gashed from a vain struggle to leap the
falls, was floating, belly-upward, down the current, close to Barnes's
side of the stream. A gentle eddy caught it, and drew it into the
pool. Sluggishly it came drifting down toward Barnes's hidden face. In
the twigs of the poplar sapling it came to a halt, its great scarlet
gills barely moving as the last of life flickered out of it.

Barnes now understood quite well that unseen commotion which had
followed, along shore, the course of the dying salmon. It was no
surprise to him whatever when he saw a huge black bear emerge upon the
yellow sandspit and stand staring across the current. Apparently, it
was staring straight at Barnes's face, upturned upon the surface of
the water. But Barnes knew it was staring at the dead salmon. His
heart jumped sickeningly with sudden hope, as an extravagant notion
flashed into his brain. Here was his rescuer--a perilous one, to be
sure--vouchsafed to him by some whim of the inscrutable forest-fates.

He drew down another branchy twig before his face, fearful lest his
concealment should not be adequate. But in his excitement he disturbed
his balance, and with the effort of his recovery the water swirled
noticeably all about him. His heart sank. Assuredly, the bear would
take alarm at this and be afraid to come for the fish.

But to his surprise the g