The racket released the bear from the charm Lyddie seemed to have placed on him. He banged the door aside and rushed in toward the ladder, but Charles snatched it. The bottom rungs swung out, hitting the beast in the nose. The blow startled him momentarily, giving Lyddie a chance to help Charles haul the ladder up onto the platform and out of reach. The old bear roared in frustration and waved at the empty air with his huge paws, then reared up on his hind legs. He was so tall that his nose nearly touched the edge of the loft. The little girls cried out. Their mother screamed, “Oh Lord, deliver us!”

“Hush,” Lyddie commanded. “You’ll just make him madder.” The cries were swallowed up in anxious gasps of breath. Charles’s arms went around the little ones, and Lyddie put a firm grip on her mother’s shoulder. It was trembling, so Lyddie relaxed her fingers and began to stroke. “It’s all right,” she murmured. “He can’t reach us.”

But could he climb the supports? It didn’t seem likely. Could he, in his frustration, take a mighty leap and … No, she tried to breathe deeply and evenly and keep her eyes fixed on those of the beast. He fell to all fours and, tossing his head, broke off from her gaze as though embarrassed. He began to explore the cabin. He was hungry, obviously, and looking for the source of the smell that had drawn him in. He knocked over the churning jug and licked tentatively at the blade, but Lyddie had cleaned it too well after churning that morning and the critter soon gave up trying to find nourishment in the wood.

Before he found the great pot of oatmeal in the kettle over the fire, he had turned over the table and the benches and upended the spinning wheel. Lyddie held her breath, praying that he wouldn’t break anything. Charles and she would try to mend, but he was only ten and she thirteen. They hadn’t their father’s skill or experience. Don’t break nothing, she begged silently. They couldn’t afford to replace any of the household goods.

Next the beast knocked over a jar of apple butter, but the skin lid was tied on tightly, and, flail away at it as he might with his awkward paw, he could not dislodge it. He smacked it across the floor where it hit the overturned bench, but, thank the Lord, the heavy pottery did not shatter.