wo children to
gather _nau_, which is a kind of _puc_ made from the young bamboo
shoots. They were very successful in getting it, and were just on the
point of going home with their loads, when right before them appeared a
large black bear. The bear opened wide his mouth and roared, showing his
immense white teeth and great throat, and came ambling toward them
growling all the while in the fiercest kind of way.

Now as soon as the man saw the bear he just threw away all the _nau_
that he had in his hands and ran for his life, calling on his wife to do
the same. The two children followed their father and left their mother
to get out of her trouble as best she could. She, however, was as brave
as her husband was cowardly, and instead of running away, she took a
handful of the longest of the shoots and thrust them down the open
throat of the bear and killed him. She then took the short sword that
they had brought from home to cut the shoots, and with it she skinned
the bear, cut him up, and made the skin into a sack in which to carry
the meat.

Meanwhile her cowardly husband did not stop running till he reached the
city in which he lived, and then he told all his neighbors how he had
been in the jungle and a great bear had attacked them; how he had fought
bravely for a long while, but at last it had killed his wife and eaten
her. The neighbors were very sorry for him, but advised him to get home
and fasten all the doors and windows before the spirit of his wife would
have time to get in, for they said, seeing that she was killed when he
was with her, her ghost would without doubt try and gain admittance to
the house and haunt it. Once in, it would be very difficult to get her
out.

The man, more frightened than ever, ran home as fast as he could and
called his children to bring all the rice that was already cooked into
the house, and then they fastened up the two doors and the one window
with bamboos and rattan. There was to be a feast in the city that night,
and the two children wanted to go and see the fun, but their father was
in such a fright that he would not give them permission to go, or even
to look out through the holes in the sides of the house where the bamboo
matting had come unfastened and bulged away from the posts.

By this time the sun had set and it was just getting dark, and the man,
tired with the hunt in the jungle and the excitement after, was just
going to sleep when he heard a voice that he recog