kept in one corner of the great court-yard, not for any scientific
purposes, but to try with them, at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, the
mettle of the young gentlemen who were candidates for the honor of
knighthood. But after looking over the bulls and stags, wolves and bears,
Hereward settled it in his mind that there was none worthy of his steel,
save one huge white bear, whom no man had yet dared to face, and whom
Hereward, indeed, had never seen, hidden as he was all day within the old
oven-shaped Pict's house of stone, which had been turned into his den.
There was a mystery about the uncanny brute which charmed Hereward. He was
said to be half-human, perhaps wholly human; to be the son of the Fairy
Bear, near kinsman, if not uncle or cousin, of Siward Digre. He had, like
his fairy father, iron claws; he had human intellect, and understood human
speech, and the arts of war,--at least so all in the place believed, and
not as absurdly as at first sight seems.

For the brown bear, and much more the white, was, among the Northern
nations, in himself a creature magical and superhuman. "He is God's dog,"
whispered the Lapp, and called him "the old man in the fur cloak," afraid
to use his right name, even inside the tent, for fear of his overhearing
and avenging the insult. "He has twelve men's strength, and eleven men's
wit," sang the Norseman, and prided himself accordingly, like a true
Norseman, on outwitting and slaying the enchanted monster.

Terrible was the brown bear: but more terrible "the white sea-deer," as
the Saxons called him; the hound of Hrymir, the whale's bane, the seal's
dread, the rider of the iceberg, the sailor of the floe, who ranged for
his prey under the six months' night, lighted by Surtur's fires, even to
the gates of Muspelheim. To slay him was a feat worthy of Beowulf's self;
and the greatest wonder, perhaps, among all the wealth of Crowland, was
the twelve white bear-skins which lay before the altars, the gift of the