The warning did not come too soon, for at that instant the bear rose again on her hind-legs, with a furious growl, preparatory to springing on me. Mr Tidey was still too far off to fire with any certainty of mortally wounding the bear, and, should his bullet miss her, it might hit me. My life depended, therefore, on my next shot; should I miss, one blow from her tremendous paw would bring me to the ground, and the next instant I should be torn to pieces. I loaded as rapidly as I could, while I kept my eye on my antagonist. Scarcely had I time to ram down the ball when she was close up to me. I dared not look to ascertain what help Mr Tidey was likely to afford me. As the bear approached I lifted up my rifle to my shoulder and fired. The bear gave a tremendous growl, but still advanced. With a desperate bound I sprang on one side, when over she rolled, and lay struggling on the ground. She might be up again, however, at any moment, so I ran off to a distance to reload, catching sight, as I did so, of Mr Tidey, who, coming up, fired at the bear's head, and, greatly to my relief, her struggles ceased. Having thrown some sticks and stones at the creature to ascertain that it was really dead, we approached, and found that she measured no less than seven and a half feet in length, with claws four and a half inches long. I shuddered as I thought of the dreadful wounds she might have inflicted with them. We skinned her, and as we were already heavily loaded, we hung up the hide and part of the flesh to the branches of a neighbouring tree, carrying only a little of the meat for our supper. We had got close to our camp, when Mr Tidey exclaimed-- "Holloa! our hut has been broken into; some rascally wolverine has paid us a visit." I ran forward, and just as I got up to the hut, out darted the thief, almost knocking me over; before I could recover myself it had made its way round to the back of the hut. I sprang to one side, hoping to get a shot at him, but he had disappeared. We hurried in, when we found our beaver-skins scattered about, most of them being so gnawed as to be utterly valueless. "This will be an annoyance to your uncle; but we may congratulate ourselves on having secured a fine bear and deer-skin, which will make some amends for our loss," he observed. We had just made up our fire, and stuck the meat on spits to roast before it, when Uncle Denis and his companion arrived, with a dozen more beaver-skins. As soon as the meat was cooked, we sat down and made a hearty meal, during which we told Uncle Denis of our loss. "We must take care that the cunning rogue does not play us such a trick again," he observed; "should it find out your venison and hear's meat, it will leave us but a small share by the morning." "Then we shall be wise to bring both into the camp to-night," said the Dominie; "if anyone will accompany me, I will go and get them."