In their play, two of the cubs had descended within twenty feet of my rock. One of these was the gourmand. Somehow, he lost his balance, rolled over, and came tumbling down. When he stopped he was not more than half a dozen feet from me. As he brought his fat little body to its feet he saw me. His eyes fairly popped. It seemed to me that for a full minute he did not move or breathe. And during that same minute I remained as still as a rock. In his amazement and his wonder, he was the funniest thing I had ever seen, and in spite of myself, my face broke into a grin. Instantly there came out of him a little, piggish grunt,--and he was off. Up that hillside he went as if the world was after him. He did not stop when he reached his mother and the other cubs, but seemed to hit it still faster for the top of the ridge. The mother looked after him, sniffed the air, and rose to her feet. In half a minute, she was lumbering after him, the two remaining cubs hustling ahead of her. A hundred yards away, the second mother bear took the warning. In a very short time, they had all disappeared over the cap of the ridge. I had not shown myself. I had made no sound. The wind was still in my favor. Yet the frightened cub had given warning to them all. For no other creature but man would they have fled like that. Even in the face of a pack of wolves, the mothers would have turned to fight. Something had told them that man was near--yet only the cub had seen and smelled that man, and he had probably never seen or smelled another. Yet he knew, and all the others knew, that man was the deadliest of all enemies. And I am half convinced, as I write this, that nature has at least the beginning of a universal language, that the centuries and hundreds of centuries have given it four words, and these words are: “Man is our enemy.” I might fancy that the winds carry these words, that the tree-tops whisper them, that they are in the undertone of running waters, that all life outside of man and man’s pitiably few friends has, in some strange way, come to learn them. It is, I confess, an elusive sort of fancy,--but it sets one to thinking.