“Don’t know,” said I, still thinking of the bear.
“O, I don’t think he’ll meddle with us,” said Sam, guessing at my hesitation. “I’m going down to get some fixins, and shall bring up a gun. If he calls again, he may get a dose of buckshot.”
No one is apt to be a great coward after the sun is up. Thus reassured, I concluded to stop to the party, for which the boys were intending to make a great preparation.
“Let’s do the thing up in style now,” said Sam.
We went at it. First we cut low, shrubby evergreens, hemlocks mostly, and with these made a sort of enclosure, some four rods in diameter, around the kettles, by planting them in the snow. Then clipping off an immense quantity of smaller boughs, we strewed the snow inside the enclosure with these. We thus had a sort of green room (without any roof), in the centre of which steamed the boiling kettles; and at the entrance, or doorway, we made a grand arch of cedar. For seats we rolled in “four-foot” cuts from the trunk of a large poplar they had lately felled, first splitting off a slab from the side of each to form a seat, which we cushioned with cedar.
Meanwhile another kettle of sirup was boiling down to supply the place of that the bear had drank; and filling some fifteen or twenty sap-buckets with clean snow, crowded down hard to make the “sheep-skins” on, we were ready for our company.
It was nearly night before all this had been completed. Sam had been down to the “settlement” and brought up a quantity of bread to go with our honey; and I was glad to see that he hadn’t forgotten the gun; for, as night began to close in again, I couldn’t help remembering the great tracks out there in the snow-drift. As it grew dark and the fire began to shine on the green boughs, our scenery looked even better than by daylight; and for beacons to our incoming guests, we fixed torches of pitch-wood upon stakes thrust into the snow around our camp, and at several points out in the woods, like lamp-posts in a town.
“Quite a show,” said Sam, surveying the preparation. “How changed and odd it makes it look all about!”
Ere long voices began to be heard coming up through the woods,—merry shouts and hails,—to which the boys responded, bidding them hurry, and promising a big “sheep-skin” to the one who first got up there.
A chorus of merry cries and laughter followed this announcement; and in a few moments a racing, panting crowd of a dozen boys and girls came up in sight, and poured under the arch—sturdy lads, and lasses in red frocks and checked aprons. And here be it said that a girl—a certain rosy Nell Ridley—won the sheep-skin by being the first under the archway. But the others were not far behind, and in another moment our green arena was swarming with the young folks.