ing a pole, Addison then belabored the snow crust about the hole
with resounding whacks--still with no result.

After this we approached less cautiously. Asa broke up the snow about
the hole and cleared it away, uncovering a considerable cavity which
extended back under the partially raised root of the fallen tree.
Halstead brought a shovel from the wood-piles; and Addison and Asa cut
away the roots of the old tree, and cleared out the frozen turf and
leaves to a depth of four or five feet, gradually working down where
they could look back beneath the root. We had begun to doubt whether we
would find anything there larger than a woodchuck.

At last Addison got down on hands and knees, crept in under the root,
and lighted several matches.

"There's something back in there," he said. "Looks black, but I cannot
see that it moves."

Asa crawled in and struck a match or two, then backed out. "I believe
it's a bear!" he exclaimed, and he wanted to creep in with a gun and
fire; but the old Squire advised against that on account of the heavy
charge in so confined a space.

Addison had been peeling dry bark from a birch, and crawling in again,
lighted a roll of it. The smoke drove him out, but he emerged in
excitement. "Bears!" he cried. "Two bears in there! I saw them!"

Asa took a pole and poked the bears cautiously. "Dead, I guess," said
he, at last. "They don't move."

Addison crept in again, and actually passed his hand over the bears,
then backed out, laughing. "No, they are not dead!" he exclaimed. "They
are warm. But they are awfully sound asleep."

"Let's haul them out!" cried Asa; and they now sent me to the wood-sled
for two or three small trace-chains. Asa then crawled in and slipped a
chain about the body of one of the bears. The other two chains were
hooked on; and then they slowly hauled the bear out, the old Squire
standing by with gun cocked--for we expected every moment that the
animal would wake.

But even when out on the snow crust the creature lay as inert as a dead
bear. It was small. "Only a yearling," the old Squire said. None of us
were now much afraid of them, and the other one was drawn out in the
same way. Their hair was glossy and as black as jet. Possibly they would
have weighed seventy-five pounds each. Evidently they were young bears
that had never been separated, and that accounted for their denning up
together; old bears rarely do this.

We put them on the wood-sled and hauled them h