“Oh, Joe, what a splendid success!” ejaculated Harmony. “Who brought him down?”
“Both of us,” answered the brother. “And we had a hard time of it, too, I can tell you. We hunted the bear and then he hunted us, and we might not have had him at all only he got stuck fast between the rocks.”
The youths decided to bring the bear directly up to the cabin door. Here Mrs. Parsons came out with a torch, for it was now dark.
“Thee has done well, my son,” said she. “And thee, too, Joseph. ’Twill give us meat for many a long day to come.”
“And what a splendid robe the bear-skin will make,” came from Harmony.
The boys were too tired to skin and cut up the bear that night, so the game was hauled into the cabin, and placed in the coldest corner the building boasted. Then all the others bustled about to get the young hunters a substantial supper.
And how good that meal tasted! It was well enough to camp in the open, but nothing at all compared to what Mrs. Parsons and the girls were able to set before them. They ate and ate, and in the meantime told of their several adventures.
It was well for the lads that they were under a roof that night, for with the setting of the sun the temperature began to drop steadily until the night became one of the coldest Kentucky had ever experienced. The wind arose and hummed, and shrieked through the trees of the forest so that sound sleeping was almost out of the question.
“Had we remained in the woods we would have been frozen to death,” said Joe, and Harry agreed with him.
Fortunately the bitter cold spell did not last over forty-eight hours, and on the third day the sun came out as bright and warm as ever.