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28s A Summer Night in a Norwegian Forest. a pair of eyes shining like glowing stars. My hair stood on an end ; I believed my fate was inevitably sealed, and shouted almost unoonsciously as if to give myself new courage : "If there's anybody there, tell me the way to Stubdale ! " A deep growl was the answer I received, and the bear, for such it was, walked quickly away in the same direction whence he had come. I stood for some time and listened to his heavy steps and the crackling of the branches under his feet. I mumbled to myself: " I wish it was daylight and that I had a gun with me, and you should have had a bullet, Master Brum, for frightening methus!" With this wish and childish threat all fear and thoughts of danger vanished, and I walked on again quite composed, on the soft mossy ground. There was now no sign of either road or path ; but it grew lighter between the trees in front of me, the forest became more open, and I found myself on the slope leading down to the shores of a large lake, surrounded on all sides by pine forests, which on the distant shores vanished under the misty veil of the night. By the red glimmering of the northern sky, which was reflected in the dark surface of the lake, over which the bats fluttered and circled, while large birds higher up in the air shot swiftly across with that croaking and penetrating whistle which not long ago had appeared so terrible to me, I found I had gone in a north-easterly direction instead of to the west. While I was meditating whether I should remain here till the sun rose, or try to find my way back to the dam, I discovered to my inexpressible joy on this side of the lake a glimpse of a fire between the trees. I ran towards it, but I soon discovered that it was farther off than it at first appeared to be, because, after håving walked about a mile, I found myself still separated from it by a deep valley. When after considerable trouble I had forced my way through tiie chaos of fallen trees, which the wind had torn up in this exposed wild region, and had ascended the other steep hill-side, I had still a good distance to walk across an open wooded heath,