By mid-afternoon the air grew colder and the snow commenced to deepen upon the earth. Bedraggled and limping, I made slow progress down the slope. Just at twilight a mother bear and her two cubs met me. They probably were climbing up to winter-quarters. I stood still to let them pass. When a few yards distant the bear rose up and looked at me with a combination of curiosity, astonishment, and perhaps contempt. With _Woof! Woof!_ more in a tone of disgust than of fear or anger, she rushed off, followed by the cubs, and the three disappeared in the darkening, snow-filling forest aisles. The trees were snow-laden and dripping, but on and on I went. Years of training had given me great physical endurance, and this, along with a peculiar mental attitude that Nature had developed in me from being alone in her wild places at all seasons, gave me a rare trust in her and an enthusiastic though unconscious confidence in the ultimate success of whatever I attempted to accomplish out of doors. About two o'clock in the morning I at last descended to the river. The fresh débris on my side of the stream so hampered traveling that it became necessary to cross. Not finding any fallen-tree bridge, I started to wade across in a wide place that I supposed to be shallow. Midway and hip-deep in the swift water, I struck the injured foot against a boulder, momentarily flinching, and the current swirled me off my feet. After much struggling and battling with the turbulent waters, I succeeded in reaching the opposite shore. This immersion did not make me any wetter than I was or than I had been for hours, but the water chilled me; so I hurried forward as rapidly as possible to warm up. After a few steps the injured leg suddenly became helpless, and I tumbled down in the snow. Unable to revive the leg promptly and being very cold from my icy-water experience, I endeavored to start a fire. Everything was soaked and snow-covered; the snow was falling and the trees dripping water; I groped about on my hands and one knee, dragging the paralyzed leg; all these disadvantages, along with chattering teeth and numb fingers, made my fire-starting attempts a series of failures. That night of raw, primitive life is worse in retrospect than was the real one. Still I was deadly in earnest at the time. Twenty-four hours of alertness and activity in the wilds, swimming and wading a torrent of ice-water at two o'clock in the morning, tumbling out into the wet, snowy wilds miles from food and shelter, a crushed foot and a helpless leg, the penetrating, clinging cold, and no fire, is going back to nature about ten thousand years farther than it is desirable to go. But I was not discouraged even for a moment, and it did not occur to me to complain, though, as I look back now, the theory of non-resistance appears to have been carried a trifle too far. At last the fire blazed. After two hours beside it I went down the river greatly improved. The snow was about fifteen inches deep.