THE GRAVE OF THE SILENT HUNTER. 2038 
might be, neither of us could tell; for Jabe, as it undoubtedly 
was, must surely have been stretched upon the ground in 
some hiding-place. I laughed heartfly. 
“Why Charlie, that fellow is frightened out of his wits by 
some ghost story,—we must get along without him!” 
“More like the bear has scared him into a fit—the spindle- 
shanked hill-tyke | !” growled Charlie, who was excessively 
wroth for a few minutes, but whose risibles could not with- 
stand the slightest allusion on my part to that dolorously timid 
“too-oot! toot!” We accordingly went to work, in despair 
of any assistance from the redoubtable Jabe, and prepared 
our meat for transportation homeward. We had reached our 
horses, and while engaged in dividing the burden between 
them, who should come crawling cautiously towards us, out 
of the wood, but our gentleman of the asthmatic horn. As 
soon as Charlie saw him, he staggered in convulsions of 
laughter, and letting his burden fall, rolled over and over 
upon the leaves, scarcely able to articulate more than a word 
or two at a time. 
“Q Jabe! O Jabe!—the bear! the bear!—run Jabe— 
the bear !—what’ll uncle Jake say!—Jabe!—run Jabe!— 
the bear !” 
Jabe, in the meantime, was very cooly examining the bear, 
while his eyes fairly glistened at the sight of the fat, heavy 
hams. 
“ Gosh! he’s a whopper! Killed jest sich a old ‘un down 
in the truck-patch back er uncle Jake’s, "bout this time last 
winter. I was out choppin’, and he com’d snuffin’ at a hog- 
bone I’d brung out for a bite, and didn’t seem to mind me,— 
so I stood still, and he kinder come too close at last, and I let 
him hev it across the nose! one lick turned him up, sir,— 
sure as a gun!” . 
I now remembered having heard uncle Jake refer to this feat 
of Jabe’—but it had been done incidentally, and in such a mat- 
ter-of-course sort of a way, that I had not noticed it specially 
