"The next morning we wandered in the neighborhood where we had seen the bear, but that day we did not find him; then we moved in the direction whither we thought he had gone. That evening we saw another boulder some twelve or fifteen feet high. 'This will be a fine place of shelter for the night,' I said to the Lapp. He replied, 'It is just the place we want. If the wind shifts we will shift also, so as to be protected.' "I lay flat along the boulder on the thick reindeer moss, the Lapp did likewise, and soon after we fell asleep with the pure bracing wind of the mountains blowing over our faces. "The next morning we saw the bear; he was a long way from us. The Lapp said to me, 'I think the bear expects to winter round here; we must watch him and follow him.' Soon after the bear disappeared. "'Do you think he has scented us?' I asked. 'I do not see how he could,' my guide replied, 'the wind is in the wrong direction for that. He has gone for some reason of his own, you may be sure. There may have been people on the other side of the hill and he has scented them.' "We moved all round our boulder to scan the country, but there was no bear in sight as far as our eyes could reach. After a while I noticed a small black spot on the top of a hill. It was the bear; he was looking all round. He then walked away and disappeared. Soon he appeared again, and we saw him walk round and round a cluster of pines. The Lapp said: 'The bear is walking, making a ring in that manner. He tries to find out if there is any danger for him, and by walking round he is sure to get the wind, no matter from what direction it comes. Sometimes the bear will try a number of places for several days before he selects one.' "'How clever the bears are to walk around in that manner,' I said. "Suddenly the bear disappeared. 'He has scented us,' said the Lapp, 'and I think he will never come back here. We have eaten all the food we have with us. We shall have to feed on berries the rest of our way. This bear will probably remain in this region and take up his winter quarters around here somewhere. I will find out where he will lie. Come to me early in the spring, before the snow melts, and we will kill him.' "'All right,' I replied; but the following spring, I regret to say, I was travelling in another part of the country, but I heard that Bruin met his fate at the hands of my Lapp when he aroused himself from his long sleep and came out from under the snow." The bears in Sweden, Norway, and Finland are very fine animals and attain great size. They vary in the color of their fur, some being almost black, but generally they are of different shades of brown. I think they rank in size next to the grizzly bear of the Rocky Mountains. They are sometimes dangerous, but not so much so as the grizzly. CHAPTER XXIV