Clutching instinctively at one of the shrubs as he fell, he whirled under its hiding foliage, and the vicious stroke of the bear's paw came down upon his leg instead of his head, while the released branches snapped upward into the face of the brute, which, as much surprised as its victim, paused in its onslaught to collect its wits. An instant later Shep dashed up, and at the bear's hindquarters. Bruin spasmodically sank his claws deeper into Tom's thigh, but turned his head and shoulders with a terrific ursine oath at this new and most palpable enemy; and ten seconds afterward Tom's revolver, its muzzle pressed close underneath the bear's ear, had emptied half an ounce of lead into its brain. A blood-freezing death squeal tore the air, and the ponderous carcass sank down, stone dead, upon Tom's body and upon the dwarfed spruce which covered it. It pinned him to the ground with an almost insupportable weight. Perhaps if the animal alone had lain upon him he might have wriggled out; but the brute's carcass also held down the tough and firmly-rooted tree, and the rocks on each side formed a sort of trough. Turn and strain as he would Tom could not free himself from the burden which threatened to smother him. Moreover, the convulsive death throe had forcibly tightened the grip of the claws in the side of his knee, which felt as if in some horrible torturing machine of the Inquisition; and had he not been able at last to reach that paw with his left hand and pull it away from the wound he would have died under the agony. Then, as he felt the blood running hot and copious down his leg, a new fear chilled his heart. Might he not bleed to death? There seemed no end to the hemorrhage, and what hope had he of succor? He thought of firing signals of distress, but could not reach the pistol, which had been knocked out of his hand. He spoke to the dog, which was barking and worrying at the bear's hind leg, and Shep came and licked his face and sniffed at his blood-soaked trousers. Then, as if even he realized how hopeless was the situation, he sat on his haunches and howled until Tom, hearing him less and less distinctly, imagined himself a boulder slowly but musically crunching to powder under the resistless advance of a glacier, and lost consciousness as the cold-blue dream-ice closed over his dust. By and by he awoke. It was dark, and something cold and soft was blowing against his face. He moved and felt the shaggy fur and the horrible pain in his leg and in his right arm, which was confined in a twisted position. Then he remembered, but forgot again. A second time he awoke. It was still dark, but a strange pallor permeated the air, and all around him was a mist of white.