The bears were constant and dangerous sources of annoyance to the bee-hunter.  It was not often that an armed man—­and le Bourdon seldom moved without his rifle—­has much to apprehend from the common brown bear of America.  Though a formidable-looking animal, especially when full grown, it is seldom bold enough to attack a 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 opened on hinges; the exterior being protected by stout bars of riven oak, securely let into the logs.  The door was made of three thicknesses of oaken plank, pinned well together, and swinging on stout iron hinges, so secured as not to be easily removed.  Its outside fastening was made by means of two stout staples, a short piece of ox-chain, and an unusually heavy padlock.  Nothing short of an iron bar, and that cleverly applied, could force this fastening.  On the inside, three bars of oak rendered all secure, when the master was at home.

“You set consid’rable store by your honey, I guess, STRANger,” said Gershom, as le Bourdon unlocked the fastenings and removed the chain, “if a body may judge by the kear (care) you take on’t!  Now, down our way we ain’t half so partic’lar; Dolly and Blossom never so much as putting up a bar to the door, even when I sleep out, which is about half the time, now the summer is fairly set in.”