THE GRATEFUL BEAR

127. THE GRATEFUL BEAR.—A married couple lived on a lonely spot far from other people. When the man was out on his hunting-ground his place of refuge used to be a snow-hut. Once, when he was stopping in it, he saw his wife running about quite naked. Greatly excited, he hastened home, but found his wife inside the house, sitting quietly with her baby, without having stirred. The man now went raving mad; and the wife, frightened at seeing him in such a state, fled from the house with her child. When at the very point of starvation she chanced to catch a partridge, but seeing a terrible bald-headed bear approaching, she threw the bird to him and made her escape. Afterwards, when she had built herself a hut on the shore, she always got an ample supply of newly-killed seals, which used to come drifting in, being gifts from the grateful bear.