ln!

While we were eating I told them about the letter of old Kate.

"Fullerton!" Aunt Deel exclaimed. "Are ye sure that was the name, Bart?"

"Yes."

"Goodness gracious sakes alive!"

She and Uncle Peabody gave each other looks of surprised inquiry.

"Do you know anybody by that name?" I asked.

"We used to," said Aunt Deel as she resumed her eating. "Can't be she's
one o' the Sam Fullertons, can it?"

"Oh, prob'ly not," said Uncle Peabody. "Back east they's more Fullertons
than ye could shake a stick at. Say, I see the biggest bear this mornin'
that I ever see in all the born days o' my life.

"It was dark. I'd come out o' the fifty-mile woods an' down along the
edge o' the ma'sh an' up into the bushes on the lower side o' the
pastur. All to once I heerd somethin'! I stopped an' peeked through the
bushes--couldn't see much--so dark. Then the ol' bear riz up on her hind
legs clus to me. We didn't like the looks o' one 'nother an' begun to
edge off very careful.

"Seems so I kind o' said to the ol' bear: 'Excuse me.'

"Seems so the ol' bear kind o' answered: 'Sart'nly.'

"I got down to a little run, near by, steppin' as soft as a cat. I could
just see a white stun on the side o' it. I lifted my foot to step on
the stun an' jump acrost. B-r-r-r-r! The stun jumped up an' scampered
through the bushes. Then I _was_ scairt. Goshtalmighty! I lost
confidence in everything. Seemed so all the bushes turned into bears.
Jeerusalem, how I run! When I got to the barn I was purty nigh used up."

"How did it happen that the stone jumped?" I asked.

"Oh, I guess 't was a rabbit," said Uncle Peabody.

Thus Uncle Peabody led us off into the trail of the bear and the problem
of Kate and the Sam Fullertons concerned us no more at that time.

A week later we had our raising. Uncle Peabody did not want a public
raising, but Aunt Deel had had her way. We had hewed and mortised and
bored the timbers for our new home. The neighbors came with pikes and
helped to raise and stay and cover them. A great amount of human
kindness went into the beams and rafters of that home and of others like
it. I knew that The Thing was still alive in the neighborhood, but even
that could not paralyze the helpful hands of those people. Indeed, what
was said of my Uncle Peabody was nothing more or less than a kind of
conversational firewood. I can not think that any one really believed
it.

We had a cheerful day. A barrel of hard cider had been s