Romany of the Snows, Continuation of "Pierre and His People", v4 by Parker, Gilbert, 1860-1932

"As I said, the blood came back to my heart. I turned to my dogs, and gave them a cut with the whip to see if I dreamed. They sat back and snarled, and their wild red eyes, the same as mine, kept looking at the bear and the quiet man on the anvil of ice and snow. Tell me, can you think of anything like it?--the strange light, the white bear of the Pole, that has no friends at all except the shooting stars, the great ice plains, the quick night hurrying on, the silence--such silence as no man can think! I have seen trouble flying at me in a hundred ways, but this was different--yes. We come to the foot of the little hill. Still the bear not stir. As I went up, feeling for my knives and my gun, the dogs began to snarl with anger, and for one little step I shivered, for the thing seem not natural. I was about two hundred feet away from the bear when it turned slow round at me, lifting its foot from the body. The dogs all at once come huddling about me, and I dropped on my knee to take aim, but the bear stole away from the man and come moving down past us at an angle, making for the plain. I could see his deep shining eyes, and the steam roll from his nose in long puffs. Very slow and heavy, like as if he see no one and care for no one, he shambled down, and in a minute was gone behind a boulder. I ran on to the man--"

The governor was leaning forward, looking intently, and said now: "It's like a wild dream--but the north--the north is near to the Strangest of All!"