ays in our new home. We
couldn't get used to it for some reason. Everything was so rough, and
clumsy and awkward, I suppose.

"Your grandmother got homesick, and didn't want me to leave her alone a
minute. She was afraid of bears and Indians, and she remembered all the
fearful stories she had ever heard or read, of the terrible things that
happened to settlers in the backwoods.

"As I was busy at work in clearing up a piece of ground round the
shanty, I didn't have to leave her alone except when I went after old
Brindle nights. The feed in the woods was so plenty that the old cow
didn't care whether she came home or not, and I had to lock her up every
night as regular as night came. Sometimes I found her close by home, and
sometimes two or three miles off. She wore a little bell which I could
hear some distance off from where she was, and it wasn't very hard work
to find her.

"I almost always took my gun with me when I went after the old cow, and
hardly ever missed bringing home a partridge or a squirrel, which your
grandmother would cook for our dinner next day. We had plenty of game in
those days, and it was splendid hunting any where you took a notion to
go. The woods were full of deer and all kinds of fowl, and so far as
that kind of food was concerned, we lived on the fat of the land.

"One night, after we had been here about a month, I started to hunt up
the cow, and forgot my gun until I had got so far that I concluded I
wouldn't go back after it. I went on through the woods in the direction
I had seen old Brindle go in the morning when I let her out of the
stable, but I could hear no bell. I wandered round and round through the
woods until it got to be quite dark. I must have got 'turned round,' as
we used to say in those days when we got bewildered, and couldn't tell
which way was north or south, for when I gave up hunting for the cow and
concluded to go home I didn't know which way to go.

"However, I started in the direction I thought most likely led towards
home. I had been going straight ahead, as I supposed, for ten or fifteen
minutes, when I heard something coming toward me with a heavy tread, and
pretty soon I heard a growl. Then I knew what it was. I had never seen a
bear in the woods, and I had no idea about what sort of fellows they
were to meet.

"If I had had my gun along I should have stood my ground, but without
any kind of weapon I thought it best to look out for any possible
danger, and