woods toward evening sheep are white patches. So, ax in hand, I
started off running as hard as I could. Later on, when we were on
the way back to the house, your mother told me all about it. She had
come across a sheep lying dead, and two bears that were just going
to eat it. Now it takes a pretty good man, one not easily frightened
and with a gun in his hand, to face a bear in September; as for a
woman empty-handed, the best thing she can do is to run for it and
not a soul will blame her. But your mother snatched a stick from the
ground and made straight for the bears, screaming at them:--'Our
beautiful fat sheep! Be off with you, you ugly thieves, or I will do
for you!' I got there at my best speed, leaping. over the stumps;
but by that time the bears had cleared off into the woods without
showing fight, scared as could be, because she had put the fear of
death into them."

Maria listened breathlessly; asking herself if it was really her
mother who had done this thing-the mother whom she had always known
so gentle and tender-hearted; who had never given Telesphore a
little rap on the head without afterwards taking him on her knees to
comfort him, adding her own tears to his, and declaring that to slap
a child was something to break one's heart.

The brief spring shower was already spent; through the clouds the
moon was showing her face--eager to discover what was left of the
winter's snow after this earliest rain. As yet the ground was
everywhere white; the night's deep silence told them that many days
must pass before they would hear again the dull roaring of the
cataract; but the tempered breeze whispered of consolation and
promise.