When Liney became stronger she told how she had seen the hollow in the sycamore tree, and had hurried toward it to hide; and how, just as she was about to enter the hollow tree, a huge bear raised upon its haunches and thrust its nose almost in her face. She said that the bear had followed her for a short distance, and then for some reason had given up the chase. Her recollection of everything that had happened was confused and indistinct, but one little fact she remembered with a clearness that was very curious: the bear, she said, had but one ear.
When Balser heard this, he arose to his feet, and gave notice to all persons present that there would soon be a bear funeral, and that a one-eared bear would be at the head of the procession. He would have the other ear of that bear if he had to roam the forest until he was an old man to find it.
How he got it, and how it got him, I will tell you in the next chapter.
CHAPTER IV.
THE ONE-EARED BEAR.
“You, Tom! You, Jerry! come here!” called Balser one morning, while he and Jim were sitting in the shade near the river in front of the house, overseeing the baby.
“You, Tom! You, Jerry!” called Balser a second time with emphasis. The cubs, snoozing in the sun a couple of paces away, rolled lazily over two or three times in an effort to get upon their feet, and then trotted to their masters with a comical, waddling gait that always set the boys laughing,—it was such a swagger.
When they had come, Balser said, “Stop right there!” and the cubs, being always tired, gladly enough sat upon their haunches, and blinked sleepily into Balser’s face, with a greedy expression upon their own, as if to say, “Well, where’s the milk?”
“Milk, is it?” asked Balser. “You’re always hungry. You’re nothing but a pair of gluttons. Eat, eat, from morning until night. Well, this time you’ll get nothing. There’s no milk for you.”
The cubs looked disgusted, so Jim said, and no doubt he was right, for Jim and the cubs were great friends and understood each other thoroughly.
“Now, I’ve been a good father to you,” said Balser. “I’ve always given you as much milk as you could hold, without bursting, and have tried to bring you up to be good respectable bears, and to do my duty by you. I have whipped you whenever you needed it, although it often hurt me worse than it did you.”