He had been alone for hours, traveling up and on.  The plain was lost to view.  He was among the granite rocks, the pine trees, and the berries now, and he gathered in food from the low bushes with dexterous paws and tongue as he traveled, but stopped not at all until among the tumbled rock, where the sun heat of the afternoon seemed to command rather than invite him to rest.

The night was black when he awoke, but Bears are not afraid of the dark—­they rather fear the day—­and he swung along, led, as before, by the impulse to get up above the danger; and thus at last he reached the highest range, the region of his native Tallac.

He had but little of the usual training of a young Bear, but he had a few instincts, his birthright, that stood him well in all the main issues, and his nose was an excellent guide.  Thus he managed to live, and wild-life experiences coming fast gave his mind the chance to grow.

Jack’s memory for faces and facts was not at all good, but his memory for smells was imperishable.  He had forgotten Bonamy’s cur, but the smell of Bonamy’s cur would instantly have thrilled him with the old feelings.  He had forgotten the cross ram, but the smell of “Old Woolly Whiskers” would have inspired him at once with anger and hate; and one evening when the wind came richly laden with ram smell it was like a bygone life returned.  He had been living on roots and berries for weeks and now began to experience that hankering for flesh that comes on every candid vegetarian with dangerous force from time to time.  The ram smell seemed an answer to it.  So down he went by night (no sensible Bear travels by day), and the smell brought him from the pines on the hillside to an open rocky dale.

Long before he got there a curious light shone up.  He knew what that was; he had seen the two-legged ones make it near the ranch of evil smells and memories, so feared it not.  He swung along from ledge to ledge in silence and in haste, for the smell of sheep grew stronger at every stride, and when he reached a place above the fire he blinked his eyes to find the sheep.  The smell was strong now; it was rank, but no sheep to be seen.  Instead he saw in the valley a stretch of gray water that seemed to reflect the stars, and yet they neither twinkled nor rippled; there was a murmuring sound from the sheet, but it seemed not at all like that of the lakes around.

[Illustration:  The Herd of Eyes]

The stars were clustered chiefly near the fire, and were less like stars than spots of the phosphorescent wood that are scattered on the ground when one knocks a rotten stump about to lick up its swarms of wood-ants.  So Jack came closer, and at last so close that even his dull eyes could see.  The great gray lake was a flock of sheep and the phosphorescent specks were their eyes.  Close by the fire was a log or a low rough bank—­that turned out to be the shepherd and his dog.  Both were objectionable features, but the sheep extended far from them.  Jack knew that his business was with the flock.