Page:The lady or the tiger and other stories, Stockton (Scribner's 1897 ed).djvu/96

86 down that branch an' through the whole corn-field, an' then the dogs they took us crossways up a hill, whar we had to cross two or three gullies, an' I like to broke my neck down one uv 'em, fur I was in sich a blamed hurry that I tried to jump across, an' the bank giv' way on the other side, as I might 'a' know'd it would, an' down I come, backward. But I landed on two niggers at the bottom of the gully, an' that kinder broke my fall, an' I was up an' a-goin' ag'in afore you'd 'a' know'd it.

"Well, as I tell ye, we jist b'iled up that hill, an' then we struck inter the widder's woods, which is the wust woods in the whole world, I reckon, fur runnin' through arter a pack o' dogs. The whole place was so growed up with chinkerpin-bushes and dog-wood, an' every other kind o' underbrush that a hog would 'a' sp'iled his temper goin' through thar in the daytime; but we jist r'ared an' plunged through them bushes right on to the tails o' the dogs; an' ef any uv us had had good clothes on, they'd 'a' been tore off our backs. But ole clothes won't tear, an' we didn't care ef they did. The dogs had a hot scent, an' I tell ye, we was close on to 'em when they got to the critter. An' what d'ye s'pose the critter was? It was a dogarned 'possum in a trap!

"It was a trap sot by ole Uncle Enoch Peters, that lived on Widder Thorp's farm. He's dead now, but I remember him fust-rate. He had an' ole mother over in Cumberland, an' he was the very oldest man in this country, an' I reckon in the whole world, that had a livin' mother. Well, that there sneakin'