"It's a good word, Mr. Todd," laughed Ruth, highly delighted at the
man and his story.

"Wal!" chuckled Jerry, "we'll say she missed me. I was so scar't
that I didn't know then whether she had missed me or was chawin' of
me. I felt I was pretty numb like below my waist. And how I did
stretch up that tree! No wonder I growed tall after that day," said
Jerry, shaking his head. "I stretched ev'ry muscle in my carcass,
Miss--I surely did!

"There was that ol she b'ar, on her hind legs and a-roarin' at me
like the Mr. Bashan's Bull that they tell about, and scratchin' the
bark off'n that tree in great strips. She cleaned the pole, as far up
as she could reach, as clean as a bald man's head. She jumped as far
as she could, gnashed her teeth, and tried her best to climb that
sapling. Every time she made a jump, or howled, I tried to climb
higher. An', Miss, that was the time I got stretched out so tall, for
sure.

"The bear, with wide-open mouth, kept on a-jumpin' an' ev'ry time
she jumped I clumb a little higher, I was so busy lookin' down at her
that I never looked up to see how fur I was gettin' toward the top,
so, all of a suddent-like, the tree top begun to bend over with me
an' sumpin' snapped. 'Twarn't my galluses, neither!" crowed Long
Jerry, very much delighted by his own tale. "I knowed that, all
right. Sna-a-ap! she went again, and I begun to go down.

"I swanny! but that was a warm time for me, Miss--it sure was. There
was that ol' she b'ar with her mouth as wide open as a church door--