tiest,
and I soon got away from him, but I made up my mind then, that it was
more fun to be the chaser than the chased.

"Another time I was out in our cornfield, and hearing a rustling, looked
through the stalks, and saw a brown bear with two cubs. She was slashing
down the corn with her paws to get at the ears. She smelled me, and
getting frightened began to run. I had a dog with me this time, and
shouted and rapped on the fence, and set him on her. He jumped up and
snapped at her flanks, and every few instants she'd turn and give him a
cuff, that would send him yards away. I followed her up, and just back
of the farm she and her cubs took into a tree. I sent my dog home, and
my father and some of the neighbors came. It had gotten dark by this
time, so we built a fire under the tree, and watched all night, and told
stories to keep each other awake. Toward morning we got sleepy, and the
fire burnt low, and didn't that old bear and one cub drop right down
among us and start off to the woods. That waked us up. We built up the
fire and kept watch, so that the one cub, still in the tree, couldn't
get away. Until daylight the mother bear hung around, calling to the cub
to come down."

"Did you let it go, uncle?" asked Miss Laura.

"No, my dear, we shot it."

"How cruel!" cried Mrs. Wood.

"Yes, weren't we brutes?" said her husband; "but there was some excuse
for us, Hattie. The bears ruined our farms. This kind of hunting that
hunts and kills for the mere sake of slaughter is very different from
that. I'll tell you what I've no patience with, and that's with these
English folks that dress themselves up, and take fine horses and packs
of dogs, and tear over the country after one little fox or rabbit. Bah,
it's contemptible. Now if they were hunting cruel, man-eating tigers, or
animals that destroy property, it would be a different thing."

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXIV

THE RABBIT AND THE HEN

"You had foxes up in Maine, I suppose, Mr. Wood, hadn't you?" asked Mr.
Maxwell.

"Heaps of them. I always want to laugh when I think of our foxes, for
they were so cute. Never a fox did I catch in a trap, though I'd set
many a one. I'd take the carcass of some creature that had died, a
sheep, for instance, and put it in a field near the woods, and the foxes
would come and eat it. After they got accustomed to come and eat and no
harm befell them, they would be unsuspecting. So jus