nd that bear was swatting the door in
a fashion that showed he was going to give us a call any old how, and I
was plumb distracted--for the life of me I didn't know what to do.

"'Don't make such a damn noise!' growls Aggy.

"'You'd better get out of that!' I yells. 'You'll get noise enough in
a minute!' But he didn't pay the least attention.

"Just before the door went down I broke for the cock-loft; it was the
only spot that seemed to hold the teeniest bit of safety. I clim up
the wall like a hopper-grass, but I had no more than made it when my
friend was in the house. 'Twas me he wanted to see, too, apparently;
for he never noted anything else, but headed straight for the loft. I
had kind of hoped the other two would amuse him for a while, but it
wasn't to be. With the door down, the moonlight streamed in so it was
'most as light as day.

"'Keep your big feet off me!' says Ag, very indignant, as the bear
walked on him. It's a great thing not to know who you're talking to
sometimes.

"Well, brother bear upends himself, and reaches for the loft. He could
just nicely hook his front toe-nails on the board, and when I saw that,
I would have sold myself out hide and hair and good-will of the
business extremely reasonable. 'Here's where my esteemed friend
Hydraulic Smith gets piped out,' I thought, and I tried to meet my
finish like a man, but there was something about winding up as filler
for a dirty, smelly bear wrapper that took all the poetry out of the
situation.

"I saw that Aggy had got on to the state of affairs at last; he was
crawling backward very cautious, and he had a look of pained surprise
on his face that beat anything I'd ever seen on the phiz of man or
beast before. For all I was so scart that I was sweating icicles, I
couldn't help but snicker. Howsomever, at that moment brother bear
threw his weight on the board, and she snapped like a toothpick, and my
merry smile took a walk. I was in a desperate fix! He had only to
keep on pulling down boards to the last one, and then, of course, I'd
come down with it. Something had to be done. I grabbed a sack of
flour and heaved it at him; the sack caught on a splinter and ripped,
so beyond covering him with powder it had no particular result. He
_did_ stop and taste the flour; he had lots of time! There wasn't any
good in that. But as I reached around for another weapon my hand
struck the can of alcohol, and right then I had a genuine three