human being, nothing but hunger, or care for its young, ever
inducing it to go so much out of the ordinary track of its habits.
But the love of the bear for honey amounts to a passion. Not only
will it devise all sorts of bearish expedients to get at the sweet
morsels, but it will scent them from afar. On one occasion, a family
of Bruins had looked into a shanty of Ben's, that was not
constructed with sufficient care, and consummated their burglary by
demolishing the last comb. That disaster almost ruined the
adventurer, then quite young in his calling; and ever since its
occurrence he had taken the precaution to build such a citadel as
should at least set teeth and paws at defiance. To one who had an
axe, with access to young pines, this was not a difficult task, as
was proved by the present habitation of our hero.

This was the second season that le Bourdon had occupied "Castle
Meal," as he himself called the shanty. This appellation was a
corruption of "chateau au Mtel" a name given to it by a wag of a
voyageur^ who had aided Ben in ascending the Kalamazoo the previous
summer, and had remained long enough with him to help him put up his
habitation. The building was just twelve feet square, in the
interior, and somewhat less than fourteen on its exterior. It was
made of pine logs, in the usual mode, with the additional security
of possessing a roof of squared timbers of which the several parts
were so nicely fitted together as to shed rain. This unusual
precaution was rendered necessary to protect the honey, since the
bears would have unroofed the common bark coverings of the shanties,
with the readiness of human beings, in order to get at stores as
ample as those which the bee-hunter had soon collected beneath his
roof. There was one window of glass, which le Bourdon had brought in
his canoe; though it was a single sash of six small lights, that