The kettle, which must have held several pailfuls, was nearly empty; and what was left hadn’t a very inviting look certainly.
“What in the world ate all that?” cried I.
“Well—a bear, we expect,” said Zeke. “There’s been one hanging round here for several nights. We heard him hoot out, down in the swamp, ever so many times, after you had gone to sleep last night. Didn’t think he’d come up so near the fire, though. But we both got to sleep a little while after midnight. I suppose he must have lushed up the sirup then.”
“Tremendous fellow, too,” said Sam. “Look at those tracks!”
Tracks indeed! There in the snow about the kettle were his broad, deep footmarks, long as a man’s boot, and much wider, pressed down, too, into the snow, as only great weight could have pressed.
“Gracious!” exclaimed I, “you wouldn’t have caught me going to sleep here if I had known there was such a monster as that round!”
“Rather lucky, I think,” said Zeke, “that he didn’t take it into his head to top off his sirup with some of us.”
“And I’m mad, too,” continued Zeke. “We were depending on this kittle of sirup for our party to-night.”
“Your party?”
“Yes; we’ve invited a lot of the boys—and girls, too—to come up here this evening, to make ‘sheep-skins.’ You’ll stay—won’t you? We were going to ask you.”