more'n ten yards ahead
when I come busting through, upsetting children and old women, and
landed in what I guess was the main street of the place and right
abreast of a parade that was marching down the middle of it.

First there was the band, four fellers tooting and banging like fo'mast
hands on a fishing smack in a fog. Then there was a big darky toting a
banner with "Jenkins' Unparalleled Double Uncle Tom's Cabin Company, No.
2," on it in big letters. Behind him was a boy leading two great, savage
looking dogs--bloodhounds, I found out afterwards--by chains. Then come
a pony cart with Little Eva and Eliza's child in it; Eva was all gold
hair and beautifulness. And astern of her was Marks the Lawyer, on his
donkey. There was lots more behind him, but these was all I had time to
see just then.

Now, there was but one way for Booth Hank to get acrost that street, and
that was to bust through the procession. And, as luck would have it, the
place he picked out to cross was just ahead of the bloodhounds. And the
first thing I knew, them dogs stretched out their noses and took a long
sniff, and then bust out howling like all possessed. The boy, he tried
to hold 'em, but 'twas no go. They yanked the chains out of his hands
and took after that poet as if he owed 'em something. And every one of
the four million other dogs that was in the crowd on the sidewalks fell
into line, and such howling and yapping and scampering and screaming you
never heard.

Well, 'twas a mixed-up mess. That was the end of the parade. Next minute
I was racing across country with the whole town and the Uncle Tommers
astern of me, and a string of dogs stretched out ahead fur's you could
see. 'Way up in the lead was Booth Montague and the bloodhounds, and
away aft I could hear Jonadab yelling: "Stop thief!"

'Twas lively while it lasted, but it didn't last long. There was a
little hill at the end of the field, and where the poet dove over
'tother side of it the bloodhounds all but had him. Afore I got to the
top of the rise I heard the awfullest powwow going on in the holler, and
thinks I: "THEY'RE EATING HIM ALIVE!"

But they wan't. When I hove in sight Montague was setting up on the
ground at the foot of the sand bank he'd fell into, and the two hounds
was rolling over him, lapping his face and going on as if he was their
grandpa jest home from sea with his wages in his pocket. And round them,
in a double ring, was all the town dogs, crazy mad,