92 THE HIVE OF THE BEE-HUNTER. 



" I started after, but was tripped up by my inex- 

 pressibles, which, either from habit or the excitement of 

 the moment, were about my heels, and before I had 

 really gathered myself up, I heard the old varmint 

 groaning, like a thousand sinners, in a thicket near by, 

 and, by the time I reached him, he was a corpse. 



" Stranger, it took five niggers and myself to put that 

 carcass on a mule's back, and old long-ears waddled 

 under his load, as if he was foundered in every leg of 

 his body; and with a common whopper of a bear, he 

 would have trotted off, and enjoyed himself. 



" 'Twould astonish you to know how big he was : 

 I made a bed-spread of his skiii^ and the way it used 

 to cover my bear mattress, and leave several feet on each 

 side to tuck up, would have delighted you. It was, in 

 fact, a creation bear, and if it had lived in Samson's 

 time, and had met him in a fair fight, he would have 

 licked him in the twinkling of a dice-box. 



"But, stranger, I never liked the way I hunted him, 

 and missed Jiim. There is something curious about it, 

 that I never could understand, — and I never was satis- 

 fied at his giving in so easy at last. Prehaps he had 

 heard of my preparations to hunt him the next day, so 

 he jist guv up, like Captain Scott's coon, to save his 

 wind to grunt with in dying ; but that ain't likely. My 

 private opinion is, that that bear was an unliuntahle bmr^ 

 and died when his time cojncy 



When this story was ended, our hero sat some min- 



