The great moon rose white and solemn above the hills, and poured her silver over the forests, and the whole world seemed asleep too.
It was just in their first sweet slumber that everyone in that house was waked by the strangest, the most melancholy, the most frightful sound they had ever heard. Now it was loud, high, and shrill. “Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!” it came. Now it was a long, low growl. Now again it was a series of sharp cries like barks. Now it was a roar; and something was knocking about the chairs on the piazzas, scratching at the windows, lumbering down the steps and plowing and plunging over the grass—something with heavy jaws and coming clap, clap, along the front of the house. Finally it made off clumsily in the direction of the shed, and raised such an uproar there that the sky rang with it.
Every one was out of bed and at the windows. The twins, half hiding behind the curtains in fright, shivered as they saw plainly in the moonlight a big creature standing erect, cuffing away at the side of the shed, and whining and growling all the more when a little whine and a little yelp answered from within.
Pincher saw the children, and laughed. He was standing at the window at the other end of the long hall.
“It’s Mother Bear,” he called. “Hear her! ‘Where’s my little bear?’ she’s askin’. ‘Where’s my baby? You folks, give him back or I’ll eat your babies. Little Bruin, I’m a-hearin’ of ye. Ye want your mammy, don’t you? She’s smelled ye all the way here. How ’m I goin’ ter fetch ye out blest ef I know! But I’m goin’ ter fetch ye! I say! Give me my little bear! He’s a dreffle bright bear! Ef you folks only seen him eatin’ of blackberries you’d know how smart he wuz. Say, I jest can’t lend him! I’ve got to get him real fat ’fore we go into winter quarters. How’d ye get here, any way, ye little scamp? Can’t I leave ye five minutes? Ye was safe asleep in a soft holler, an’ then w’en I was wadin’ inter the river with a bee-hive in my arms, so’s to drown the bees an’ git the honey, off ye go! Don’t ye know little bears should mind their mother? Oh, somebody tuk ye. Br-r-r! I won’t leave so much as their aprons if I can lay paws on them! that is, onless so be it’s Ally and Essie. But I’ll hev to box their ears for ’em, I guess. I say, now, folks! Br-r-r! Br-r-r! I’ll tear the place down if ye don’t give me my cub!’”
“Oh, Pincher! does she say all that?” asked Ally.
“Pincher! would she tear the house down?” cried Essie.
“The poor mother!” Aunt Susan was exclaiming, hurrying into her dressing-gown and slippers. And then she and Old Uncle ran down the back way, followed by Pincher; and they took up the cub, and opened the shed-door a crack, and pushed him through, and banged and bolted the door behind him.
Everybody looked out that could. The mother bear stood off a moment on her hind legs. Then she fell on the cub like an avalanche, and held him in her arms as any mother holds her baby, and licked him from top to toe, and lay down and gave him his dinner. After that, gazing back at the house every step or two with a growl, she lurched off, little Bruin laboriously following. But Pincher declared that the last he saw, as he watched her out of sight, she was up on her hind legs carrying her baby in her arms like anybody.