A BEAR IN THE PATH 65 



discovered too late that obedience is life; he 

 started on his own course, and at last became 

 the victim of a bear, and so vanished into the 

 mystery and silence of the woods. 



A BEAR IN YOUR PATH WHEN YOU ARE IN 



PURSUIT OF A TWENTY-FIVE POUND 



SALMON. 



Leaving the educational methods of the bear 

 and her cubs, I think the following story will be 

 more interesting. 



" One day, following a porcupine to see where 

 he was going, I found a narrow path running for 

 a few hundred yards along the side of the cliff, 

 just over where the salmon used to lie, and not 

 more than thirty feet above the swift rush of 

 water. I went there with my rod, and without 

 attempting to cast, dropped my fly into the cur- 

 rent and paid out from my reel. When the line 

 straightened I raised the rod's tip and set my fly 

 dancing and skittering across the surface to an 

 eddy behind a great rock. In a flash I had 

 raised and struck a twenty-five pound fish, and 

 in another flash he had gone straight down 

 stream in the current, where from my precarious 

 seat I could not control him. Down he went, 

 leaping wildly high out of the water, in a glorious 

 rush, till all my line buzzed out of the reel, down 

 to the very knot at the bottom, and the leader 

 snapped as if it had been made of spider's web. 



u I reeled in sadly, debating with myself the 

 unanswerable question of how I should ever have 



