all the time
that she was there, on the other side of the ridge, one of his nearest
neighbours, and not more than seven or eight miles away as the crow
flies.

"It's the bears!" she explained. "They do be gittin' jest a leetle
mite _too_ sassy, down to my place. There ain't no livin' with 'em.
They come rootin' round in the garden, nights. An' they've et up the
white top-knot hen, with the whole settin' of eggs, that was to hev'
hatched out next Monday. An' they've took the duck. An' last night
they come after the pig."

"They didn't git _him_, did they?" inquired Joe Barron sympathetically.

"No, siree!" responded Mrs. Gammit with decision. "An' they ain't
agoin' to! They scairt him though, snuffin' round outside the pen,
trying to find the way in.--I've hearn tell they was powerful fond of
pork.--He set up sich a squealin' it woke me; an' I yelled at 'em out
of the winder. I seen one big black chap lopin' off behind the barn. I
hadn't nothin' but the broom fer a weapon, so he got away from me.
I'll git him to-night, though, I reckon, if I kin have the loan of
your gun."

"Sartain," assented the woodsman, laying down the breech-strap he was
mending. "Did you ever fire a gun?" he inquired suddenly, as he was
starting across the yard to fetch the weapon from his cabin.

"I can't rightly say I hev'," answered Mrs. Gammit, with a slight note
of scorn in her voice. "But from the kind of men I've seen as _kin_, I
reckon it ain't no great trick to larn."

Joe Barron laughed, and went for the weapon. He had plenty of
confidence in his visitor's ability to look out for herself, and felt
reasonably sure that the bears would be sorry for having presumed upon
her unprotected state. When he returned with the gun--an old,
muzzle-loading duck-gun, with a huge bore--she accepted it with
careless ease and held it as if it were a broom. But when he offered
her the powder-horn and a little bag of buckshot, she hesitated.

"What be _them_ for?" she inquired.

Joe Barren looked serious.

"Mrs. Gammit," said he, "I know you kin do most anything a man kin
do--an' do it better, maybe! A woman like you don't have to apologize
for nothin'. But you was not _brung up_ in the woods, an' you can't
expect to know all about a gun jest by _heftin'_ it. Folks that's been
brung up in town, like you, have to be _told_ how to handle a gun.
This here gun ain't _loaded_. And them 'ere's the powder an' buckshot
to load her with. An' here's caps,