Now the siren voices of the little folks had made him thoughtful. Had he nothing to give them but disappointment? He hesitated. Then he fell, as it were, but, happily, for the sake of those two he had begun to love, and not through pride. It was a kind of modesty which caused him to reach for the candle and blow it out. Then, boldly, as it were, he began to sing a brief account of one of his own adventures. He could sing without stammering, and therefore he sang an odd and almost tuneless chant. He accepted such rhyme and rhythm as chanced to drift in upon the monotonous current of his epic; but he turned not aside for them. He sang glibly, jumping in and out of that old, melodious trail of "The Son of a Gamboleer." Strong called this unique creation of his "THE STORY OF THE MELLERED BEAR. "One day yer Uncle Silas went for to kill a bear, An' a dog he took an' follered which his name was little Zeb; Bym-by we come acrost a track which looked as big as sin, An' Zeb he hollered 'twas a bear, which I didn't quite believe in Until I got down on my knee, an' then I kind o' laughed, For su'thin' cur'us showed me where he'd wrote his autygraft, An' which way he was travellin' all in the frosty snow; An' I follered Zeb, the bear-dog, as fast as I could go, An' purty soon I see Where the bear had tore his overcoat upon a hem lock-tree, An' left some threads behind him which fell upon his track, Which I wouldn't wonder if he done a-scratchin' of his back, Which caused me for to grin an' laugh all on ac count o' my feelin's." Here came a pause, in which the singer sought a moment of relaxation, as it would seem, in a thoughtful and timely cough. "Bym-by I come up kind o' dost an' where that I could see Zeb was jumpin' like a rabbit an' a-hollerin' t' me; An' I could see the ol' bear's home all underneath a ledge, An' the track of his big moggasins up to the very edge. I took an' fetched some pine-knots an' a lot of ol' dead limbs, An' built a fire upon his door-step an' let the smoke blow in; An' then I took a piece o' rope an' tethered Zeb away So's that he'd keep his breeches fer to use another day. An' purty soon I listened an' I heard the bear a-coughin', An' he sneezed an' bellered out as if he guessed he'd