The roots of a fallen pine between which tufts of moss are hanging make the walls and roof of his dwelling, branches and twigs protect it, the snow makes it warm. He can lie there and sleep a good quiet sleep from summer to summer. Is he, then, a poet, a dreamer, this hairy monarch of the forest? Will he sleep away the cold winter’s chill nights and colorless days to be waked by purling brooks and the song of birds? Will he lie there and dream of blushing cranberry bogs, and of ant-hills filled with brown delicious creatures, and of the white lambs which graze on the green slopes? Does he want, happy one! to escape the winter of life? Outside the snow-storm rages; wolves and foxes wander about, mad with hunger. Why shall the bear alone sleep? Let him get up and feel how the cold bites, how heavy it is to wade in deep snow. He has bedded himself in so well. He is like the sleeping princess in the fairy tale; and as she was waked by love, so will he be waked by the spring. By a ray of sunlight which penetrates through the twigs and warms his nose, by the drops of melting snow which wet his fur, will he be waked. Woe to him who untimely disturbs him! He hears, suddenly, shouts, noise, and shots. He shakes the sleep out of his joints, and pushes aside the branches to see what it is. It is not spring, which rattles and roars outside his lair, nor the wind, which overthrows pine-trees and casts up the driving snow, but it is the pensioners, the pensioners from Ekeby, old acquaintances of the forest monarch. He remembered well the night when Fuchs and Beerencreutz sat and dozed in a Nygård peasant’s barn, where they awaited a visit from him. They had just fallen asleep over their brandy-bottle, when he swung himself in through the peat-roof; but they awoke, when he was trying to lift the cow he had killed out of the stall, and fell upon him with gun and knife. They took the cow from him and one of his eyes, but he saved his life. Yes, verily the pensioners and he are old acquaintances. He remembered how they had come on him another time, when he and his queen consort had just laid themselves down for their winter sleep in the old lair here on Gurlitta Cliff and had young ones in the hole. He remembered well how they came on them unawares. He got away all right, throwing to either side everything that stood in his path; but he must limp for life from a bullet in his thigh, and when he came back at night to the royal lair, the snow was red with his queen consort’s blood, and the royal children had been carried away to the plain, to grow up there and be man’s servants and friends. Yes, now the ground trembles; now the snow-drift which hides his lair shakes; now he bursts out, the great bear, the pensioners’ old enemy. Look out, Fuchs, old bear-killer; look out now, Beerencreutz; look out, Gösta Berling, hero of a hundred adventures!