“Why?”
“The little bear has come home with a dead man, one whom I do not know.”
When it grew light, they went out and saw that it was the man from the north, and they could see he had been running fast, for he had drawn off his furs, and was in his underbreeches. Afterwards they heard that it was his comrades who had urged the bear to resistance, because he would not leave it alone.
A long time after this had happened, the old foster-mother said to the bear:
“You had better not stay with me here always; you will be killed if you do, and that would be a pity. You had better leave me.”
And she wept as she said this. But the bear thrust its muzzle right down to the floor and wept, so greatly did it grieve to go away from her.
After this, the foster-mother went out every morning as soon as dawn appeared, to look at the weather, and if there were but a cloud as big as one’s hand in the sky, she said nothing.
But one morning when she went out, there was not even a cloud as big as a hand, and so she came in and said:
“Little bear, now you had better go; you have your own kin far away out there.”
But when the bear was ready to set out, the old foster-mother, weeping very much, dipped her hands in oil and smeared them with soot, and stroked the bear’s side as it took leave of her, but in such manner that it could not see what she was doing. The bear sniffed at her and went away. But the old foster-mother wept all through that day, and her fellows in the place mourned also for the loss of their bear.