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“‘I’ll have him now,’ said I, for I had found my caps in the lining of my coat— so, rolling a log into the lake, I paddled myself across to the island, just as the dogs had cornered the bear in a thicket. I rushed up and fired at the same time the critter leaped over the dogs and came within three feet of me, running like mad, he jumped into the lake, and tried to mount the log I had just deserted, but every time he got half his body on it, it would roll over and send him under; the dogs, too, got around him, and pulled him about, and finally Bowieknife clenched with him, and they sunk into the lake together.

“Stranger, about this time I was excited, and I stripped off my coat, drew my knife, and intended to have taken a part with Bowie knife myself, when the bear rose to the surface. But the varmint staid under Bowieknife came up alone, more dead than alive, and with the pack came ashore.

“‘Thank God!’ said I, ‘the old villain has got his deserts at last.’

“Determined to have the body, I cut a grape-vine for a rope, and dove down where I could see the bear in the water, fastened my rope to his leg, and fished him, with great difficulty, ashore. Stranger, may I be chawed to death by young alligators, if the thing I looked at wasn’t a shebear, and and notthe old critter after all.

“The way matters got mixed on that island was onaccountably curious, and thinking of it made me more than ever convinced that I was hunting the devil himself. I went home that night and took to my bed the thing was killing me. The entire team of Arkansaw in bear-hunting acknowledged himself used up, and the fact sunk into my feelings as a snagged boat will in the Mississippi. I grew as cross as a bear with two cubs and a sore tail. The thing got out ‘mong my neighbors, and I was asked how come on that individ-u-al that never lost a bear when once started? and if that same individ-u-al didn’t wear telescopes when he turned a she-bear, of ordinary size, into an old he one, a little larger than a horse?

” ‘Prehaps,’ said I, ‘friends’ getting wrathy ‘prehaps you want to call somebody a liar?’

“‘Oh, no,’ said they, ‘we only heard of such things being rather common of late, but we don’t believe one word of it; oh, no,’ and then they would ride off, and laugh like so many hyenas over a dead nigger.

“It was too much, and I determined to catch that bear, go to Texas, or die, and I made my preparations accordin’.

“I had the pack shut up and rested. I took my rifle to pieces, and fled it.

“I put caps in every pocket about my person,for fear of the lining.

“I then told myneighbors, that on Mondaymorning naming the day I would start that bearand bring him home with me, or they might divide my settlement among them, the owner having disappeared.

“Well, stranger, on the morning previous to the great day of my hunting expedition, I went into the woods near my house, taking my gun and Bowieknife along, just from habit,and there sitting down, also from habit, what should I see, getting over my fence, but the bear!Yes, the old varmint was within a hundred yards of me, and the way he walked over that fencestranger; he loomed up like a black mist,he seemed so large, and he walked right towards me.