"If it hadn't been for you I should have had a squeeze, uncle!" cried Tom, laughing.
"You're a thoughtless, foolish boy, Tom!" said his uncle; "who but you, I wonder, would have run after a bear with nothing but a rail!"
"He is indeed a thoughtless boy," said his father, "but I hope a grateful one; you have most probably saved his life!"
"Uncle knows I am grateful, I'm sure," said Tom, "I needn't tell him!"
"It's a fine beast, and fat as butter," remarked Uncle John, feeling its sides as he spoke, "yet he must have been hungry, fond as a bear is of pork, to venture so near a house by daylight!"
"What a warm fur!" observed Mr. Lee, "just feel how thick the hair is!"
"But what can we do with such a mountain of flesh and fat?" asked Tom. "We can't eat it, and we've no dogs."
"O, we'll eat it fast enough!" replied his uncle; "a bear ham is a delicacy, I assure you."
"I think we may as well set about skinning and cutting it up for curing at once, as we have little to do to-day. What say you, John?"