Page:The lady or the tiger and other stories, Stockton (Scribner's 1897 ed).djvu/84

 THAT SAME OLD 'COON.

E were sitting on the store-porch of a small Virginia village. I was one of the party, and Martin Heiskill was the other one. Martin had been out fishing, which was an unusual thing for him.

"Yes, sir," said he, as he held up the small string of fish which he had laid carefully under his chair when he sat down to light his pipe; "that's all I've got to show for a day's work. But 'taint often that I waste time that way. I don't b'lieve in huntin' fur a thing that ye can't see. If fishes sot on trees, now, and ye could shoot at 'em, I'd go out and hunt fishes with anybody. But its mighty triflin' work to be goin' it blind in a mill-pond."

I ventured to state that there were fish that were occasionally found on trees. In India, for instance, a certain fish climbs trees.

"A which what's?" exclaimed Martin, with an arrangement of pronouns peculiar to himself.

"Oh, yes!" he said, when I had told him all I knew about this bit of natural history. "That's very likely. I reckon they do that up North, where you come from, 74