80 THE HIVE OF THE BEE-HUNTER. 
tired him down, and when I came up with him wasn’t 
he in a beautiful sweat—I might say fever; and then to 
see his tongue sticking out of his mouth a feet, and his 
sides sinking and opening like a bellows, and his cheeks 
so fat that he couldn’t look cross. In this fix I blazed 
at him, and pitch me naked into a briar patch, if the 
steam didn’t come out of the bullet-hole ten foot in a 
straight line. The fellow, I reckon, was made on the 
high-pressure system, and the lead sort of bust his 
biler.” 
“That column of steam was rather curious, or else 
the bear must have been very warm,” observed the for- 
eigner, with a laugh. 
“ Stranger, as you observe, that bear was warm, and 
the blowing off of the steam show’d it, and also how hard 
the varmint had been run. I have no doubt if he had 
kept on two miles farther his insides would have been 
stewed; and I expect to meet with a varmint yet of ex- 
tra bottom, that will run himself into a skinfull of bear’s 
grease: it is possible; much onlikelier things have 
happened.”’ 
‘‘Whereabouts are these bears so abundant?” in- 
quired the foreigner, with increasing interest. 
“ Why, stranger, they inhabit the neighborhood of 
my settlement, one of the prettiest places on old Mis- 
sissipp—a perfeet location, and no mistake; a place 
that had some defects until the river made the ‘ cut-off’ 
at ‘Shirt-tail bend,’ and that remedied the evil, as it 
