It was zero weather that week, but bright and clear, with spicules of
frost glistening on every twig; and I recollect how sharply the tree
trunks snapped--those frost snaps which make "shaky" lumber in Maine.
Addison, Halstead and I, with one of the old Squire's hired men, Asa
Doane, went to the wood-lot at eight o'clock that morning and chopped
smartly till near eleven. Indeed, we were obliged to work fast to keep
warm.
Addison and I then stuck our axes in a log and went on the snow crust up
to the foot of a mountain, about half a mile distant, where the hardwood
growth gave place to spruce. We wanted to dig a pocketful of spruce gum.
For several days Ellen and Theodora had been asking us to get them some
nice "purple" gum.
As we were going from one spruce to another, Addison stopped suddenly
and pointed to a little round hole with hard ice about it, near a large,
overhanging rock across which a tree had fallen. "Sh!" he exclaimed. "I
believe that's a bear's breath-hole!"
We reconnoitered the place at a safe distance. "That may be Old Three
Paws himself," Addison said. "If it is, we must put an end to him." For
"Old Three Paws" was a bear that had given trouble in the sheep pastures
for years.
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