12 8 THE BEST OF THE FUN 



for his dinner ; and, to slay him, had armed himself with 

 an old shot-gun, the right barrel alone of which would 

 go off at all, and then only by means of raising the 

 hammer and letting it drop from the thumb. Moving 

 quietly among some scattered pine-trees, he found himself 

 behind a thick spruce, from the farther side of which came 

 sounds as of a buck feeding. "That'll be better than 

 grouse ! " thought Jim ; " I'm that close I can blow a hole 

 in him, sure." The rest shall be told as near as possible 

 in his own words. " I come round the tree quiet and sly 

 as may be, with the hammer riz with my thumb, and 

 looking to loose her off as soon as I could see the buck's 

 blue hide. I'd like to ha' dropped when, all of a minute, 

 an old black b'ar set up so close to me I could a'most ha' 

 touched him. He were grubbing about in the grass ever 

 so much lower than the buck I looked for, and I never 

 seed the big black critter till he turned and grinned. He 

 were 'nation scared, you bet, and so were I. I come very 

 near loosing the shot-gun off in his face, and running for 

 it. Then I says, as he growed and growed, ' You ain't got 

 no call to stop, I ain't a looking for you ! ' So he calcu- 

 lated he'd no use for me either, but turned round and 

 shuffled off, a'growing and a'growing, you believe me, all 

 the time. I thought you was a little b'ar,' I says, ' when I 

 first ketched sight of you, down there ; but you're a big b'ar, 

 you are, a very big b'ar, as big a b'ar as ever I seed ! ' and I 

 wiped off the sweat as come running down myface like rain." 

 Once more. " Do you ever come across bears 

 hybernating ?" " No, it's not often as anybody does. 

 I never knowed but one man as killed a b'ar from his 

 hole in winter. There was two fellars trapping in the 

 Green Water country, and they'd run out of grease — 

 hadn't a bit for cooking. A young chap we called Long 

 Island Bill (he'd come from back East two falls afore) was 

 one of 'em, and he'd never seed a b'ar. The sun was 

 shining hot, and it looked as though winter were breaking. 

 A b'ar had poked his snout out through the snow on the 

 side of the gulch ; Bill saw something black, and thought 

 it a cub as it drew back. So, says he, ' I'll get some 

 grease anyhow.' With that he tromples down the snow, 



