western ranges when the spirit of mating days called; big, and strong, and
of a beautiful golden-brown colour, so that the children of Thor and his
_Iskwao_ were the finest young grizzlies in all the mountains. The mother
took them back with her unborn, and they opened their eyes and lived and
fought in the valleys and on the slopes far to the west. If in later years
Thor ever chased his own children out of his hunting grounds, or whipped
them in a fight, Nature kindly blinded him to the fact. He was like most
grouchy old bachelors: he did not like small folk. He tolerated a little
cub as a cross-grained old woman-hater might have tolerated a pink baby;
but he wasn't as cruel as Punch, for he had never killed a cub. He had
cuffed them soundly whenever they had dared to come within reach of him,
but always with the flat, soft palm of his paw, and with just enough force
behind it to send them keeling over and over like little round fluffy
balls.

This was Thor's only expression of displeasure when a strange mother-bear
invaded his range with her cubs. In other ways he was quite chivalrous. He
would not drive the mother-bear and her cubs away, and he would not fight
with her, no matter how shrewish or unpleasant she was. Even if he found
them eating at one of his kills, he would do nothing more than give the
cubs a sound cuffing.

All this is somewhat necessary to show with what sudden and violent
agitation Thor caught a certain warm, close smell as he came around the end
of a mass of huge boulders. He stopped, turned his head, and swore in his
low, growling way. Six feet away from him, grovelling flat in a patch of
white sand, wriggling and shaking for all the world like a half-frightened
puppy that had not yet made up its mind whether it had met a friend or an
enemy, was a lone bear cub. It was not more than three months
old--altogether too young to be away from its mother; and it had a sharp