He interrupted his story to say that I needn’t be lookin’ at him like that; he never forgot Harvey was a friend of mine, and he tried to do his best by him even with “influenzy comin’ on.” “But you didn’t have influenza, Sam.” “You don’t know how near I come to it, though. That very mornin’ after sleepin’ in the fir-boughs, I got up sneezin’ awful an’ my backbone creepin’. In the night my ol’ hat had blowed clear away, an’ I said to Harvey I reckoned he wouldn’t be usin’ the cap an’ muffler both at oncet, an’ I’d wear whichever he didn’t want. He says: ‘That’s kind of you, Sam.’ “He had took off the muffler when he thought he was goin’ to shave, an’ the next minute his ears looked so brickle I could ’a’ knocked ’em off with a stick. So he had put it back on. I told him the cap didn’t have any ear-pieces, an’ I could stand the wind better’n he could. I said mighty few bear-hunters ever got out o’ the la’r’l and in home with anything on their heads at all; that Jed Weaver always went into the woods bareheaded, ’cause he said it cost too much to put hats an’ caps on the la’r’l; an’ Harvey says: ‘Oh, jest keep it, Sam, an’ let’s go.’ I told him we’d scrummish around the mountain toward the sun, an’ maybe I could shake off my chill. But it stuck to me, an’ after a while I said I’d have to stop an’ build a fire. “He got frustered then, an’ said he’d come fer bear, an’ he was goin’ to have one if he had to go on by hissef. I told him I’d go with him, even if it meant pneumony. Then he got frien’ly an’ said it wasn’t goin’ to be that bad. We’d git our bear an’ go down ’fore night. An’ he was all fer goin’ inter the la’r’l. “I went a little furder with him, an’ then I stopped all in a shiver an’ told him he must remember I didn’t have on warm clo’s like he had, though I had the same sort o’ skin; an’ I said if I drapped an’ died up there, fer him to hit Siler’s creek an’ foller it down to the settlement. “‘How ’m I goin’ ter hit Siler’s creek?’ says he. Not a bit o’ feelin’ fer me. Jest thinkin’ how he was goin’ to git down. I come near tellin’ him right then that we’s ten miles west o’ the bear-ground an’ I didn’t aim to go there with a man ’at couldn’t shoot a buzzard off a washtub.” “What do you mean, Sam?” “Why, shorely yo don’t think I’d go right where the bears wuz without a bear-dog! We’s in a bear-ground all right, like I told Harvey, only it ’us the _old_ one, the one they used years ago ’fore the people drove ’em furder back. I knowed Harvey couldn’t shoot, an’ I had to study out how to take him bear-huntin’ without gittin’ him chawed to death. ’Course the bears do stray ’round there oncet in a while, an’ we might ’a’ come on one any time.