They were traveling through a rather thin part of the forest then, making good time, for the snow was not so deep here. Occasionally they thought they had glimpses of the animal they sought, but it always proved to be nothing but a shadow, or a movement in the bushes, caused by the passage of some big rabbit. “There he goes!” suddenly cried George, pointing to the left. “Yes, that’s him!” eagerly agreed Jack. Tom and Bert also agreed that they saw something more substantial, this time, than a shadow. But a moment later the black object, for such it had been, was lost sight of. “Come on!” cried Tom, as enthusiastic as any of his chums. “We’ve got him now.” They raced forward, until they came to the place where they had seen the black object, and then they noticed a curious thing. For there were two sets of marks--human footprints, and the broad-toed tracks of the bear. “Look at that!” cried Jack. “Was that a man we saw, or the bear?” No one could say for certain. But this much was sure. The bear’s tracks led in one direction, and the man’s in another. Was the bear chasing the man, or was the man hunting the bear, was another phase of the question. “Look here!” said Tom, who had been carefully examining the two sets of impressions in the snow. “Here’s how I size this up. The bear’s tracks go in a straight line, or nearly so, as you can easily see. But the man’s tracks are in the form of a letter V and we are at the angle right here. The angle comes up right close to the trail of the bear, too. “Now I think the man was walking through the woods, approaching the bear. He didn’t know it until he was almost on the beast and then the man saw it. Of course he turned away at once and ran back. You can tell that the footprints that approach the bear’s trail are made more slowly than the others--going away. In the last case the man was running away from the bear. But the bear wasn’t afraid, and kept straight on, paying no attention to the man.” “That’s good argument,” observed Bert. “Can you tell us who the man was?” demanded George. “I’m not detective enough for that,” Tom confessed. “But I don’t believe the man was a hunter with a gun.” “Why not?” Jack wanted to know. “Because if he had a gun, he would have fired at the bear, and we’d have seen some change in the bear’s trail. Bruin would either have run at the shot, or attacked the man, provided the bullet didn’t kill at once. And you can see for yourselves that nothing like that happened. So I argue that the man had no gun.” “Then he was Skeel, or one of his two partners,” said George. “What makes you think that?” asked Bert, curiously. “Because we never saw either of them with a gun.” “That doesn’t prove anything,” Tom said. “There are lots of men in these woods who haven’t guns. It might have been Sam Wilson.” “Can you tell anything by the footprints?” asked Bert.