bar had tuk the thicket, so I went round
the edge of it to see if I could find whar he had entered.

"For a long time I couldn't see a spot whar any critter as big as a bar
could a-got in without makin' some sort o' a hole, and then I begun to
think the bar had gone some other way, either across the crik or further
down it.

"I war agoin' to turn back to the water, when I spied a big log lyin'
half out o' the thicket, with one eend buried in the bushes. I noticed
that the top of this log had a dirty look, as if some animal had tramped
about on it; an' on goin' up and squintin' at it a little closter, I
seed that that guess war the right one.

"I clomb the log, for it war a regular rouster, bigger than that 'n we
had so much useless trouble with, and then I scrammelled along the top
o' it in the direction of the brush. Thar I seed the very hole whar the
bar had got into the thicket, and thar war a regular beaten-path runnin'
through the brake as far as I could see.

"I jumped off o' the log, and squeezed myself through the bramble. It
war a trail easy enough to find, but mighty hard to foller, I can tell
ye. Thar war thistles, and cussed stingin' nettles, and briars as thick
as my wrist, with claws upon them as sharp as fish-hooks. I pushed on,
howsomever, feelin' quite sartin that sich a well-used track must lead
to the bar's den, an' I war safe enough to find it. In coorse I
reckoned that the critter had his nest in some holler tree, and I could
go home for my axe, and come back the next morning--if smoking failed to
git him out.

"Well, I poked on through the thicket a good three hundred yards,
sometimes crouching, and sometimes creeping on my hands and knees. I
war badly scratched, I tell you, and now and then I jest thought to
myself, what would be the consyquince if the bar should meet me in that
narrow passage. We'd a had a tough tussel, I reckon--but I met no bar.

"At last the brash grew thinner, and jest as I was in hopes I might
stumble on the bar tree, what shed I see afore me but the face o' a
rocky bluff, that riz a consid'able height over the crik bottom. I
begun to fear that the varmint had a cave, and so, cuss him! he had--a
great black gulley in the rocks was right close by, and thar was his
den, and no mistake. I could easily tell it by the way the clay and
stones had been pattered over by his paws.

"Of coorse, my tracking for that day war over, and I stood by the mouth
of the cave