an elk-dog stares instead of smelling you know the game is near. How¬ ever, we could neither see nor hear anything, and no tracks were visible. Elias, as usual when very near game, was apparently lost in deep thought, though every sense was, like mine, acutely on the watch. In a whisper he said, “ I think we had better go back and get up the hill; he is not in front of us or the dog would smell him.” We turned to retreat and, after a few steps, we both thought we heard a slight rustle in the thick bushes with which the hillside was covered. I cocked my rifle and stood ready. In two or three minutes I thought I heard the rustle again, and just then appeared a bit of brown skin on the hillside sixty yards off and above me. A momentary glimpse of something which I knew was not an elk just gave me time to get in a quick though steady shot, which was followed by a loud growl and nothing more. After slipping another cartridge into my favourite old Henry, which I first loaded for a Greek brigand twenty-nine years before, we cautiously approached the place up¬ wind, as Elias said, “If he is not dead we must not let him know what has hurt him.”
As we approached the place, Finn’s interest in the affair seemed to diminish as ours increased, and he rather kept to heel than in front. Nothing could be seen except where the bear had apparently rolled over once; but in a little while we found blood, and Elias rubbed Finn’s nose in it to encourage him. At first he did not seem to want any bears, but after a while he got more confidence and, until we came to where the bear had started an elk, followed the trail, which every now and then showed a few drops of blood. As soon as he winded the elk tracks, how¬ ever, his tail went up and we guessed at once that he had changed. Then for about half an hour I had to depend on Elias’s native skill in tracking, as the dog wanted to follow the elk, and the ground covered with heather showed the tracks only at intervals. Then we came to where the bear had stopped and bled, and Finn again took the scent. Elias now said he was sure that the bear had not seen or smelt us, and that he thought from the tracks that a leg was injured, but that he might go very far before he stopped. The trail kept going uphill, and through thickets of dwarf willow which were very difficult to get through without pulling the dog off the scent. Whenever we approached a place which looked likely for the bear to stop in, Elias insisted on leaving the tracks and going down-wind of the place, as he said that, in following a bear which is not badly wounded, all depends on his not knowing that he is followed. This made our progress rather slow, and after about two hours, during which our direction was always straight away from home, I called a halt to have a mouthful of food. As I began to eat my lunch, Elias said quietly, u Do not eat it all now; I think you will be more hungry tonight.” I got out the map, and saw that in the direction we were going there was no in¬ habited farm nearer than about twelve miles off, and as we were already more than that from our starting-point, I concluded that if we did not come up with the bear soon, we should have to sleep in an empty saeter or perhaps bivouac under a tree. After ten minutes’ halt we went on again, sometimes through marshy strips where the track showed plainly in the long grass, and sometimes through willow scrub where ryper kept getting
