Page 43 - A Hero of Ticonderoga

"What in tunket," cried Nathan, when speech came to his gaping mouth.
"Has that old sow got outen the pen?" Then he saw in the scattered meal

some broad tracks that a former adventure had made him familiar with, and
he heard a sound of something moving about in the cellar.

"It’s a bear," he cried, "and he’s down cellar."

As quick as the thought and words, he sprang to the open hatch, and heaved
it upright on the hinges, to close it. But just as it hung in midway poise, the

bear, alarmed by the noise overhead, gave a startled "whoof," and came
scrambling up the ladder. His tawny muzzle was above the floor, when
Nathan, with desperate strength, slammed down the hatch, and its edge

caught the bear fairly on the neck, pressing his throat against the edge of
the hatchway. The trap door had scarcely fallen when the quick-witted boy

mounted it and called to his frightened sister to mount beside him, and with
their united weight, slight as it was, they kept him from forcing his way
upward, till in his frantic struggles he dislodged the ladder and hung by the

neck helpless, without foothold.

The children held bravely to their post, hand in hand, while to the gasping
moans of the angry brute succeeded cries of anger, that were in turn
succeeded by silence and loss of all visible motion but such as was

imparted to the head by the huge body still slowly vibrating from the final
struggle. When this had quite ceased they ventured off the trap door, and,

pale and panting, they stood before the ghastly head as frightful now in
death, with grinning, foam-flecked jaws, protruding tongue, and staring,
bloodshot eyes, as it had been in living rage. Nathan caught his sister in his

arms and hugged her, shouting:

"We’ve killed him. We’ve killed a bear," while she, in the same breath,
laughed and cried, till they both bethought themselves of the dinner-getting
not yet begun.

"I can’t get down cellar," said Nathan, "for I dasn’t open that door. What be

we goin’ to do?"