In a small settlement of this wild tract, a few miles to the north-east of Lorette, there dwelt, some six or seven years ago, a poor farmer named Cantin, who added to the meagre fare afforded by his sterile acres such stray birds and hares as he could get within range of his old musket, without risking himself very far away from the isolated clearing. One night in the early part of May, when the snow had disappeared from the open grounds, but lingered yet in the ravines and rocky thickets, a dreadful tumult among the cattle of the settlement indicated the presence of bear. Cantin had the old firelock ready, but the night was dark and unfavorable for active measures. At gray morning, traces of the nocturnal intruder were visible, and that close by the _cabane_ in which Cantin lived, in the little inclosure near which a struggle had evidently taken place, resulting in the discomfiture of a yearling calf, portions of which were discovered in the thickets a short distance from the clearing. Here the patches of snow gave ample evidence of the passage of a very large bear. When the sun was well up, Cantin sallied forth alone, with his gun and a small supply of ammunition,--unluckily for him, a very small supply. He did not return to dinner. Shots were heard in the course of the day, at a considerable distance in the hills; and when the afternoon was far advanced, and Cantin had not made his appearance, several of his neighbors--all the men of the settlement, indeed, and they made but a small party--set out in search of him. The snow-patches facilitated their search; and, having tracked him a good way, they suddenly saw him kneeling by a tree at the end of an open glade, with his hands clasped in an attitude of prayer. He was a frightful spectacle when they raised his _bonnet-bleu_, which had fallen down over his face. The entire facial mask had been torn clean from the skull by a fearful sweep of the bear's paw, and hung from his collar-bone by a strip of skin. He must have been dead for some hours. Fifty yards from where he knelt, the bear was found lying under some bushes, quite dead, and with two bullet-holes through its carcass. Cantin, it appeared, had expended all his ammunition, and the wounded beast had executed a terrible vengeance on him while the life-blood was welling through the last bullet-hole. I saw this bear brought into Quebec, in a cart, on the following day; and it is to be seen yet, I believe, or at least the taxidermal presentment of it is, in the shop of a furrier in John Street of that city. An enterprising druggist bought up the little fat left in the animal after its long winter's fast; and such was the demand among sensational people for gallipots of "grease of the bear that killed Cantin," that it seemed as if fashion had ordained the wearing of hair "on end."