savory viands smoked
from multiplied motherly platters; and there were Indian bread, potato
and turnip sauce, cranberry and wild plum sauce, a stack of wild honey
in the snow-white comb, and cakes and pumpkin pies.

The bear's meat was discussed with fairness and spirit, and pronounced
right fat and fine; and the supper, washed down before and after with
metheglin of Aunt Polly's happiest mix, was taken with good relish.

"You get nothing better'n this on the Hudson, I reckon," said Uncle
Walter to Fabens. "Give me a new country after all for elbow-room, a
sharp appetite and a good pick o' game. I guess the Major wouldn't
loathe such a bite as this."

"Aunt Polly for a supper of bear's meat, I say," added Colwell.

"Aunt Polly for the fixins too," added Wilson.

"Such fixins don't come afore every gang o' hungry hunters," added
Flaxman. "Is't sage, or savory sprinkled on this meat? This plum
sauce don't cly my appetite a bit; nor these fried scutlets; and I love
to gnash my shovel-teeth on a clean comb o' honey; and honey, they say,
is healin'."

"If you eat any more honey, Flaxman," said Wilson, "Uncle Mose 'll have
to take you up. He'll make more'n he would to take up a bee-hive. But
did ever anybody else get up a lusciouser pumpkin-pie? Aunt Polly
always makes 'em deep enough to swim in; and she don't spare the maple
sugar at all, nor the ginger, nor the shortnin' in the crust. And she
crimps the edges so curious."

"How do _you_ like a batin' like this, Fabens?" asked Colwell. "What
makes you so mum? aint home-sick, be you?"

"I like it well, I assure you. I didn't think bear's meat was so
fine," answered Fabens. "I am not homesick; I was just thinking how
she chased me, and how narrowly I escaped."

"It was much as ever," said Teezle, "much as ever that the critter
didn't mutton you. She skipped like a painter, and whet up her teeth
for a whalin' bite. But don't think on it now. Here, who'll tell a
good story, and cheer up Fabens a little? Uncle Walt, tell one of your
painter stories. That 'll wean him of his fright."

"O, yes, tell a painter story," said Colwell.

"Yes, that's the thing," added Wilson.

"Fabens's run was only a jolly game o' gool, compared with your pull
and squeeze with a painter," added Mr. Waldron.

"The one on the tree, that watched me half a day, cat-fashion? or the
one that dogged me through the Owasco woods? or the one that chased me
home to the chips?" asked