cess known in sporting parlance
as "shaking a fox." The usual amount of "law" having been conceded, the
hounds were laid on, and went away, as Button said, like a fire-flake
over a prairie. No sooner did "The Buffer" hear the cry of the pack,
than he started forward with a suddenness and force by which his
wretched rider was jerked back at least a foot behind the saddle,
into which place of rest he never once again fell during his many
vicissitudes of position in that ride. I have said that Button was
bow-legged; and to that providential fact did he attribute the power by
which he clung on to various parts of the steed during his wild career
of perhaps a mile, but which seemed to the troubled senses of the rider
not much less than fifty. It was providential for him, too, that the
country was but sparsely intersected by fences, and those not of a very
formidable character: nevertheless, at each of these the too confiding
Button experienced a change of position, being, as he used to express
it, "interjuiced forrard o' the saddle or back'ard o' the saddle,
accordin' to the kind o' thing the hoss flew over, and one time
booleyvusted right under the hoss, whar he hung on by the girth ontil
another buck-jump sent him right side on ag'in; but never, on no
account, did he touch leather ag'in in all that ride." And thus Billy
Button might have ridden farther and fared worse, had he not seen a
terrible fate staring him imminently in the face. The hounds had just
entered a little grove of young pine-trees, which stood very close
together, and bristled with sharp, jagged branches nearly to the root,
after the manner of these children of the wood. At this place of torture
"The Buffer" was rushing with all his might, Button being then situated
upon his neck, in a position most convenient for being "skinned alive"
by the trees, as he said, when a plunge made by the animal over a plashy
pool transferred the rider to his tail, from which he "collapsed right
down in a kind o' swoon, and when he come to, found himself settin' up
to his elbows in muddy water, very solitary-like, and with a terrible
stillness all around."--What became of "The Buffer" I forget, and also
how Button got home; but he certainly did not ride. And he always wound
up the narrative of his first and last fox-hunt by invoking terrible
ends to himself, if ever he "threw leg over dog-hoss ag'in, to see a
throw-off."

Button left Lorette about two years after I first bec