't going to help you. Hit
him, Br'er Fox! If he runs, I'll catch him!"

Br'er Fox he sort of took heart. He sidled up toward him, and just as he
was making ready to slap him, old Cousin Wildcat drew back, and fetched
Br'er Fox a wipe across the stomach.

That there Cousin Wildcat fetched him a wipe across the stomach, and you
might have heard him squall for miles and miles. Little more and the
creature would have torn Br'er Fox in two. Once the creature made a pass
at him, Br'er Rabbit knew what was going to happen, yet all the same he
took and hollered:

"Hit him again, Br'er Fox! hit him again! I'm a-backing you, Br'er Fox!
Hit him again!"

While Br'er Rabbit was going on in this way, Br'er Fox was squatting on
the ground, holding his stomach with both hands and moaning:

"I'm ruined, Br'er Rabbit! I'm ruined! Fetch the doctor! I'm teetotally
ruined!"

About this time Cousin Wildcat took and went for a walk. Br'er Rabbit
make like he astonished that Br'er Fox is hurted. He took and examine
the place, and he up and say: "It look to me, Br'er Fox, that that
owdacious villain took and struck you with a reaping hook."

With that Br'er Rabbit lit out for home, and when he got out of sight he
took and shook his hands, just like a cat when she gets the water on her
foots. Then he laugh and laugh till he can laugh no more.

[R] From "More Funny Stories About Br'er Rabbit," published by
Stead's Publishing House, London, England, and used with their
permission.

[Illustration: "'HELLO!'"]

PLANTATION STORIES

BY GRACE MACGOWAN COOKE

I.--MRS. PRAIRIE-DOG'S BOARDERS

Texas is a near-by land to the dwellers in the Southern States. Many of
the poorer white people go there to mend their fortunes; and not a few
of them come back from its plains, homesick for the mountains, and with
these fortunes unmended. Daddy Laban, the half-breed, son of an Indian
father and a negro mother, who sometimes visited Broadlands plantation,
had been a wanderer; and his travels had carried him as far afield as
the plains of southwestern Texas. The Randolph children liked, almost
better than any others, the stories he brought home from these extensive
travels.

"De prairie-dog a mighty cur'ous somebody," he began one day, when
they asked him for a tale. "Hit lives in de ground, more samer dan a
ground-hog. But dey ain't come out for wood nor water; an' some folks
thinks dey goes plumb down to de springs what feeds wells. I