Dorothy’s heart was thumping like a steam-engine.  Fear, indeed, seemed to give her wings, for she gathered up her skirts and ran towards the house as she had never run in her life.

But the bear had just an hour or so before risen from his long winter’s sleep, influenced, doubtless, by those “blind motions of the earth that showed the year had turned”; feeling uncommonly empty, and therefore uncommonly hungry, he had left his cave in the hillside lower down the valley to saunter upwards in search of a meal.  The horses had unfortunately scented him before he was aware of their proximity, and, with that lively terror which all animals evince in the neighbourhood of bears, had broken madly away, to Bruin’s great chagrin.  If he had not been half asleep, and therefore stupid, he would have crawled upon them from the lee side, and been on the back, or at the throat, of one before they could have divined his presence.  The noise of the men’s voices had startled him, and he had gone into the wood heap to collect his thoughts and map out a new plan of campaign.  The voices had ceased, but there was a nice, fresh-looking girl, who had walked right into his very arms, as it were.  It was not likely he was going to turn up his nose at her.  On the contrary, he would embrace the opportunity—­and the young lady.

He must, indeed, have still been half asleep, for he had given Dorothy time to make a start, and there was no questioning the fact that she could run.  Bruin gathered himself together and made after her.  Now, to look at a bear running, one would not imagine he was going at any great rate; his long, lumbering strides seem laboured, to say the least of it, but in reality he covers the ground so quickly that it takes a very fast horse indeed to keep pace with him.

Before Dorothy had got half-way to the hut, she knew she was being closely pursued.  She could hear the hungry brute behind her breathing hard.  At length she reached the hut, but the door was shut.  She threw herself against it and wrenched at the handle, which must have been put on upside down to suit some whim of the owners, for it would not turn.  The bear was close upon her, so with a sob of despair she passed on round the house.  Next moment she found herself confronted with a log wall and in a species of cul-de-sac.  Oh! the horror of that moment!  But there was a barrel lying on its side against the wall of the hut Afterwards she marvelled how she could have done it, but she sprang on to it, and, gripping the bare poles that constituted the eaves of the shanty, leapt upwards.  Her breast rested on the low sod roof; another effort and she was on it.  The barrel was pushed from her on springing, and, rolling out of harm’s way, she realised that for her it had been a record jump.  The vital question now was, could the bear follow?

She raised herself on hands and knees among the soft, wet snow, and looked down apprehensively at the enemy.