32 TRUE BEAR STORIES.

passed away forever with the Indian, the
pioneer, and the music-loving bear. It is
strange how a man—TI mean the natural
man—will feel a presence long before he
hears it or sees it. ‘You can always feel the
approach of a—but I forget. You are of
another generation, a generation that only
reads, takes thought at second hand only,
if at all, and you would not understand;
so let us get forward and not waste time
in explaining the unexplainable to you.

Father got up, turned about, put me be-
hind him like, as an animal will its young,
and peered back and down through the
dense tangle of the deep river bank be-
tween two of the huge oxen which had
crossed the plains with us to the water’s
edge; then he reached around and drew me
to him with his left hand, pointing between
the oxen sharp down the bank with his
right forefinger.

A bear! two bears! and another coming;
one already more than half way across on
the great, mossy log that lay above the