At last he came to the oatmeal, bubbling—by the smell of it, scorching—over the fire. He thrust his head deep into the kettle and howled with pain as his nose met the boiling porridge. He threw back his head, but in doing so jerked the kettle off the hook, and when he turned, he was wearing it over his head like a black pumpkin. The bear was too stunned, it seemed, simply to lower his neck and let the kettle fall off. He danced about the room in pain on four, then two legs, the kettle covering his head, the boiling oatmeal raining down his thick neck and coat.

He knocked about, searching for the way out, but when he found the open door, managed to push it shut. Battering the door with his kettle-covered head, he tore it off its leather hinges and loped out into the dark. For a long time they could hear him crashing through the bush until, at last, the November night gathered about them once more with its accustomed quiet.

Then they began to laugh. Rachel first, throwing back her dark curls and showing the spaces where her pretty little teeth had been only last summer. Then Agnes joined in with her shrill four-year-old shout, and next Charles’s not yet manly giggle.

“Whew,” Lyddie said. “Lucky I’m so ugly. A pretty girl couldn’t a scared that old rascal!”

“You ain’t ugly!” Rachel cried. But they laughed louder than ever, Lyddie the loudest of all, until the tears of laughter and relief ran down her thin cheeks, and her belly cramped and doubled over. When had she laughed so much? She could not remember.

Her mother’s shoulders were shaking, but Lyddie couldn’t see her face. Mama must be laughing too. Lyddie dared to hope that her mother might laugh. Oh, there was the door to mend and the mess to be cleaned up, and the wasted porridge. But tomorrow she and Charles would find the kettle. The bear couldn’t have taken it far and he was sure to have left more than an adequate trail with all that crashing through the underbrush. Let her be laughing, she prayed.

“Mama,” she whispered, leaning her mouth close to her mother’s ear. “You all right, ey?”

Her mother whirled toward her. “It’s the sign,” she said.

“What sign, Mama?” Lyddie asked, though she did not want an answer.

“Clarissa said when the end drew near, the devil would walk the earth.”

“That weren’t no devil, Mama,” Charles said. “It were only a black bear.”

“ ‘Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.’ ”

“Aunt Clarissa don’t know, Mama,” Lyddie said as firmly as she could, though a shudder went through her body.

“It were only a black bear.” Rachel’s anxious little voice echoed her brother’s, and then, “Weren’t it, Lyddie? Weren’t it a bear?”