But there was little time for laughter when a precious kettle and a fat bear might at any moment be lost by the fracture of one and the escape of the other. Seth had no weapon but his axe, but with this he essayed prompt attack, the happy opportunity for which was at once offered. In one of his blind, unguided rushes, the bear charged directly toward the camp, till his iron-clad head struck with a resounding clang against the great boiling kettle. As he reeled backward from the shock, half stunned by it, and bewildered by the unaccustomed sound that still rang in his ears, Seth was beside him with axe uplifted.
Only an instant he deliberated where and how to strike; at the skull he dared not with the axe-head, for fear of breaking the kettle, and he disliked to strike with the blade further back for fear of disfiguring the skin. But this was the preferable stroke, and in the next instant the axe-blade fell with a downright blow, so strong and well aimed that it severed the spinal column just forward of the shoulders. The great brute went down, paralyzed beyond all motion, to fall in a helpless heap and yield up his life with a few feeble gasps.
"Oh, father," cried Nathan, the first to break the sudden silence, with a voice tremulous in exultation, "to think we've got a bear. Won't mother and Marthy be proud? and won't Job think we're real hunters?"
Waiting but a moment to stroke the glossy fur and lift a huge inert paw, but such a little while ago so terrible, he sped home to bring his mother and sister to see the unexpected prize, while the jays renewed their querulous outcry, and the squirrel vociferously scoffed the fallen despoiler of his stolen nuts.
The flesh made a welcome addition to the settler's scanty store of meat, the fat furnished a medium for frying the hitherto impossible doughnut, and Job promised to bring them a handsome price for the skin, when he should sell it with his own peltry to the fur traders. But the praise he bestowed upon Seth's coolness in the strange encounter was sweeter to Nathan than all else.
As the days went on the advance of spring became more rapid and more apparent. Already the clearing was free from snow, and even in the shadow of the forest the tops of the cradle knolls showed the brown mats of last year's leaves above the surface, that was no longer a pure white, but littered with the winter downfall of twigs, moss, and bits of bark, and everywhere it was gray with innumerable swarming mites of snow fleas. Great flocks of wild geese harrowed the sky. Ducks went whistling in swift flight just above the tree tops, or settled in the puddles beginning to form along the border of the marsh. Here muskrats were getting first sight of the sun after months of twilight spent beneath the ice.