Women and children screamed and rushed for a farther corner of the
church, while the more hysterical fainted. Even strong men were for a
second startled.

But from his eminence at the altar Father Gaspard saw their mistake and
soon reassured them.

Meanwhile, the innocent cause of all the disturbance had been as much
scared by the team as had the half-witted boy by him, and was making
for the deep woods at his best pace.

One night, early in July, Alec Pierre, a wood-chopper, came to the
village with a startling story. He had been chopping two or three
miles back in the heavy timber. His own home was closer to the
primeval forest than any other of the many straggling farmhouses.

He had taken his dinner, going and coming at morning and evening. Each
noon he went to a cool spring which he knew of, to eat his lunch.

This noon he had gone as usual, only to discover that some one had
gotten ahead of him. There by the spring, sitting upon his haunches,
was an enormous black bear. In his paws he was holding the
coffee-bottle, looking at it intently, while his countenance plainly
bespoke satisfaction with the discovery.

While the woodsman was wondering what was the best thing to do, the
bear raised the bottle to his mouth, and biting upon the cork with his
teeth, pulled it out. Then he put the nose of the bottle in his mouth
and drank the contents with as much ease as if he had been the real
owner.

"I so scart I jes' stan' there an' say nutting. He eat my doughnut, he
eat my pie. He act jes' like folks. Pretty soon I keep on looking
some more an' I see down in his har, round hees neck one peeg collar,
jes' like a dog.

"Heem one beeg deevil. I so scart when he drink out uv de bottle, I no
say nutting. He eat my pie, I no say nutting. I 'fraid he take my gun
by the tree an' shoot me. By gar.

"By and by he go way and I go up an' look. Perhaps I t'ink I been
dreaming. So I pinch my lage an' it hurt, an' then I look aroun' an'
there bar-track beeg as snow-shoe.

"Eet so queer I t'ink heaps an' heaps. Then pretty soon I t'ink he
some puddy tame bar run away. He break he chain. That why heem
collar. I say to myself, no chain, no collar.

"Heem one tame bar run away. He know how do treeks. I catch heem in
one small log-house I beeld. When circus come round next week, or two,
I seel heem get pig money."

Those villagers who listened to Alec's tale agreed that his reasoning
was good, but mos