“Oh they’ll eat anything when they’re hungry,” said Beelzy. “Sofa cushions, parlor rugs, hotel registers—anything they can fasten their teeth to. Last year they came in through the cupola, burrowin’ down through the snow to get at it, and there they stayed enjoyin’ life out o’ reach o’ the wind and storm, snug’s bugs in rugs. Year before last there must ha’ been a hundred of ’em in the hotel when I got here, but one by one I got rid of ’em. Some I smoked out with some cigars Mr. Munchausen gave me the summer before; some I deceived out, gettin’ ’em to chase me through the winders, an’ then doublin’ back on my tracks an’ lockin’ ’em out. It was mighty wearin’ work.
“Last June there was twice as many. By actual tab I shooed two hundred and eight bears and a panther off into the mountains. When the last one as I thought disappeared into the woods I searched the house from top to bottom to see if there was any more to be got rid of. Every blessed one of the five hundred rooms I went through, and not a bear was left that I could see. I can tell you, I was glad, because there was a partickerly ugly run of ’em this year, an’ they gave me a pile o’ trouble. They hadn’t found much to eat in the hotel, an’ they was disappointed and cross. As a matter of fact, the only things they found in the place they could eat was a piano stool and an old hair trunk full o’ paper-covered novels, which don’t make a very hearty meal for two hundred and eight bears and a panther.”
“I should say not,” said Sapphira, “particularly if the novels were as light as most of them are nowadays.”
“I can’t say as to that,” said Beelzy. “I ain’t got time to read ’em and so I ain’t any judge. But all this time I was sufferin’ like hookey with awful spasms of whoopin’ cough. I whooped so hard once it smashed one o’ the best echoes in the place all to flinders, an’ of course that made the work twice as harder. So, naturally, when I found there warn’t another bear left in the hotel, I just threw myself down anywhere, and slept. My! how I slept. I don’t suppose anything ever slept sounder’n I did. And then it happened.”
Beelzy gave his trousers a hitch and let his voice drop to a stage whisper that lent a wondrous impressiveness to his narration.
“As I was a-layin’ there unconscious, dreamin’ of home and father, a great big black hungry bruin weighin’ six hundred and forty-three pounds, that had been hidin’ in the bread oven in the bakery, where I hadn’t thought of lookin’ for him, came saunterin’ along, hummin’ a little tune all by himself, and lickin’ his chops with delight at the idee of havin’ me raw for his dinner. I lay on unconscious of my danger, until he got right up close, an’ then I waked up, an’ openin’ my eyes saw this great black savage thing gloatin’ over me an’ tears of joy runnin’ out of his mouth as he thought of the choice meal he was about to have. He was sniffin’ my bang when I first caught sight of him.”
“Mercy!” cried Sapphira, “I should think you’d have died of fright.”
“At the first whoop Mr. Bear jumped ten feet and fell over backwards on the floor.” Chapter XII.
“I did,” said Beelzy, politely, “but I came to life again in a minute. ‘Oh Lor!’ says I, as I see how hungry he was. ‘This here’s the end o’ me;’ at which the bear looked me straight in the eye, licked his chops again, and was about to take a nibble off my right ear when ‘Whoop!’ I had a spasm of