The child's wails now grew louder and more frequent. The old bear became uneasy; in another moment she might flee farther into the woods, or worse than that, might silence the little one with a blow or a crunch of her powerful jaws.
The desperate man raised his gun. The fitful moonlight shimmered and danced upon the barrel, and the shadows from the tree-tops alternated with the dancing moonbeams. He could see the sight but dimly and, added to all this, was the thought that the gun was not a rifle, with an accurate bullet, but an old shotgun loaded with a Minie ball.
At first, his arms shook so that he could not hold the gun steady, but by a mighty effort he nerved himself. For a second the moon favored him; a moment the sight glinted just in front of the bear's left shoulder, frightfully close to his child's head, and then he pressed the trigger.
A bright flame leaped from the muzzle of the old gun; its roar resounded frightfully through the aisles of the naked woods, and its last echo was followed by the startled cry of the infant.
Dropping the gun in the snow, the man bounded forward, drawing a long knife from his belt as he ran. Four or five frantic bounds carried him to the foot of the beech, where the bear had stood when he fired.
There in the snow lay the enormous black form, and close beside it in a snowdrift, still nicely wrapped in its blanket, was the child, apparently without a scratch upon it.
CHAPTER III
A WILDERNESS BABY
When the young farmer beheld the great hulk of the black bear lying motionless at the foot of the beech, and saw his child lying unharmed in the snow, his eye, that had been so keen at the moment of peril, grew dim and his senses swam, like one upon a high pinnacle, about to fall.