So , slipping on her snow-shoes , she started on her way . As no fresh snow had fallen , the trail was quite easy to find , and she walked straight on , till it led her up to the pit where the bear was waiting for her . He grasped her as she fell and broke her neck , after which he laid her in the snow beside her husband , and went back to tell the bear chief . Hour after hour dragged heavily by in the forest hut , and at last the brother and sister felt quite sure that in some way or other all the rest of the family had perished . Day after day the boy climbed to the top of a tall tree near the house , and sat there till he was almost frozen , looking on all sides through the forest openings , hoping that he might see someone coming along . Very soon all the food in the house was eaten , and he knew he would have to go out and hunt for more . Besides , he wished to seek for his parents . The little girl did not like being left alone in the hut , and cried bitterly ; but her brother told her that there was no use sitting down quietly to starve , and that whether he found any game or not he would certainly be back before the following night . Then he cut himself some arrows , each from a different tree , and winged with the feathers of four different birds . He then made himself a bow , very light and strong , and got down his snow-shoes . All this took some time , and he could not start that day , but early next morning he called his little dog Redmouth , whom he kept in a box , and set out . After he had followed the trail for a great distance he grew very tired , and sat upon the branch of a tree to rest . But Redmouth barked so furiously that the boy thought that perhaps his parents might have been killed under its branches , and stepping back , shot one of his arrows at the root of the tree . Whereupon a noise like thunder shook it from top to bottom , fire broke out , and in a few minutes a little heap of ashes lay in the place where it had stood . Not knowing quite what to make of it all , the boy continued on the trail , and went down the right-hand fork till he came to the clump of bushes where the bears used to hide . Now , as was plain by his being able to change the shape of the two brothers , the bear chief knew a good deal of magic , and he was quite aware that the little boy was following the trail , and he sent a very small but clever bear servant to wait for him in the bushes and to try to tempt him into the mountain . But somehow his spells could not have worked properly that day , as the bear chief did not know that Redmouth had gone with his master , or he would have been more careful . For the moment the dog ran round the bushes barking loudly , the little bear servant rushed out in a fright , and set out for the mountains as fast as he could . The dog followed the bear , and the boy followed the dog , until the mountain , the house of the great bear chief , came in sight . But along the road the snow was so wet and heavy that the boy could hardly get along , and then the thong of his snow-shoes broke , and he had to stop and mend it , so that the bear and the dog got so far ahead that he could scarcely hear the barking .
When the strap was firm again the boy spoke XXXXX his snow-shoes and said : ` Now you must go as fast as you can , or , if not , I shall lose the dog as well as the bear . '
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