deed, I stopped his supplies
from my larder by finishing the floor and building up the hole between
the lower log of the house and the ground.

But to return to my story. As soon as the beast had made his exit, we
lighted a candle and examined the room, which we found in confusion and
disorder. The barrel of pork was upset and the brine running in
miniature rivers over the floor, while poor little Suffolk was bleeding
from his wounds--indeed nearly killed. From what I could make out of
the footprints outside I am inclined to think my unwelcome visiter was
a bear; but this, of course, will for ever remain a mystery.

I have heard many stories of their boldness, to some instances of which
I have been an eye-witness. Not very long after the occurrence I have
just related, the wife of an Irish emigrant saw a large bear walking
very deliberately towards the shanty, which no doubt he mistook for a
pigsty, and the inmates for pigs, for they were quite as dirty,
therefore it was no great mistake, after all. The woman and her three
children had barely time to get into the potato-cellar and shut down
the trap-door, when his bear-ship made his forcible entrance through
the feeble barrier the door opposed to his strength, much to the dismay
and terror of the subterranean lodgers, who lay shaking and quaking for
more than an hour, till the dying screams of their fatted pig told them
he was after game of a more savoury nature.

In the fall of the year it is no uncommon thing for farmers to have
their pigs killed by the bears, particularly in the new settlements.

Bears are, we know, very fond of good things. They are epicures in
their way. They like honey, and love pork, and, you may be sure, often
pay the settler a visit for the sake of his pigs. As Bruin makes very
good eating himself, these visitations are sometimes made at the risk
of his own bacon; his warm jacket, which makes comfortable robes for
the settler's sleigh, keeping him warm during his journeys on pleasure
or business throughout the long Canadian winters.

One day, I was assisting my father-in-law and his sons in logging up
his fallow, when we heard a great outcry among the pigs in a belt of
woods between Mr. Reid's and Mr. Stewart's clearing, when, suspecting
it was a bear attacking the swine, we ran for our guns, and made the
best of our way towards the spot from whence the outcry proceeded.

Near the edge of the clearing we met Mr. B-----, who was on a visit