THE STORY OF MOWEEN
This is a story a hunter told me as we sat by the camp-fire on the top of the mountain, after a day’s climb through the woods:—
“When I was a child, my home was on the edge of a great forest. There were but few people near us, and not a town for miles and miles. Many wild animals lived in the woods, which were so wide and deep that most of the animals had never seen a human being.
“One day my father and a neighbor were out hunting. There was no breeze, and the woods were very still. They were walking down a hillside, stepping quietly over the fallen trunks and dry leaves, when suddenly, ‘Look! look!’ my father whispered to his companion.
“A strip of water gleamed through the trees, and a mother bear and three cubs were walking along the shore. The bear caught the sound or the scent of some one near, for she stopped, rose on her hind legs, and snuffed the air, and all the little bears did exactly what she did. ‘We have surprised Bruin giving her children a lesson,’ said my father. But as he turned to speak, and before he could say a word to prevent, his companion had shot the mother bear. She tumbled down on the sand, and the little bears began to whimper and cry.
“Father never spoke to that man again, though he was a neighbor; and a neighbor means a good deal when the nearest one lives two miles away.
“The cubs were brave fellows; they did not run away even when the men went up to them, but stayed by their mother, whimpering a little. ‘It was pitiful to see them,’ father said. He was not willing to go away and leave the little fellows, for they were too small to take care of themselves; and now they had no mother to teach them bear language and bear ways. He picked up one and carried it, and the others followed. So he brought the three bears home to be my playmates, and glad I was to see them. They cried at first and missed their mother; but they soon became accustomed to living with people. What frolics we had! Every morning we would scamper up and down the road. When some one called in to the house and I ran in, they would come running and tumbling after me. We played house and school and soldier together, and though I often wished they could talk with me, in every other way they were good comrades.
“They were always good-natured. You have heard a dog growl over a bone; the bears preferred lumps of sugar, which they took without growling. How they liked sweet things! They would come into the pantry and beg for cake; and when my mother wanted to give us all a treat, she would make molasses candy.