cked herself up and shook herself together. The
bear had vanished. She eyed with amazement the continued gyrations of
the pig.

"Poor dear!" she muttered presently, "some o' the bilin' water must
'ave slopped on to him! Oh, well, I reckon he'll git over it bime-by.
Anyhow, it's a sight better'n being all clawed an' et up by a bear, I
reckon!"

Mrs. Gammit now felt satisfied that this particular bear would trouble
her no more, and she had high hopes that his experience with hot water
would serve as a lesson to all the other bears with whom she imagined
herself involved. The sequel fulfilled her utmost expectations. The
bear, smarting from his scalds and with all his preconceived ideas
about women overthrown, betook himself in haste to another and remoter
hunting-ground. A good deal of his hair came off, in patches, and for
a long time he had a rather poor opinion of himself.

When, for over a week, there had been no more raids upon barn or
chicken-roost, and no more bear-tracks about the garden, Mrs. Gammit
knew that her victory had been final, and she felt so elated that she
was even able to enjoy her continuing diet of cold turkey. Then, one
pleasant morning when a fresh, sweet-smelling wind made tumult in the
forest, she took the gun home to Joe Barren.

"What luck did ye hev, Mrs. Gammit?" inquired the woodsman with
interest.

"I settled them bears, Mr. Barren!" she replied. "But it wasn't the
gun as done it. It was bilin' water. I've found ye kin always depend
on bilin' water!"

"I hope the gun acted right by you, however!" said the woodsman.

Mrs. Gammit's voice took on a tone of reserve.

"Well, Mr. Barren, I thank ye kindly for the loan of the weepon. Ye
_meant_ right. But it's on my mind to warn ye. Don't ye go for to
trust that gun, or ye'll live to regret it. _It don't hit what it's
aimed at._"

The Blackwater Pot

The lesson of fear was one which Henderson learned late. He learned it
well, however, when the time came. And it was Blackwater Pot that
taught him.

Sluggishly, reluctantly, impotently, the spruce logs followed one
another round and round the circuit of the great stone pot. The
circling water within the pot was smooth and deep and black, but
streaked with foam. At one side a gash in the rocky rim opened upon
the sluicing current of the river, which rushed on, quivering and
seething, to plunge with a roar into the terrific cauldron of the
falls. Out of that thunderous cauldro