een
gifted in that peculiar way, and by and by, when he woke up, and
stretched, and moved back in the shade, and leaned against a stump to
smoke, they asked him.

Mr. 'Possum said it was a very old story, because it had happened about
a hundred and fifty-six great-grandfathers back. He had heard it when he
was quite small, he said, and would have to think some, to get it
straight. So then he shut his eyes and smoked very slowly, and about the
time the Deep Woods people thought he was going to sleep again he began
telling.

"My family is a very ancient one," he said--"one of the oldest in the
Big Deep Woods, and there used to be only a few, even of us. That was
when Mr. Painter, or Panther, as we say now, was King of the Deep Woods,
and he was very fond of our family, which helped to make them scarce,
and was one reason why they got to slipping out at night for food, when
Mr. Painter was asleep.

"We were a pretty poor lot in those days, and whenever Mr. Painter took
after one of my ancestors that ancestor would make for a tree and run
out on a limb that was too small to bear up Mr. Painter, and just cling
there, because Mr. Painter would climb up, too, and shake the limb, and
very often he would shake an ancestor down, like a papaw, and the only
thing to do then was to make for another tree, or if the next tree was
too far, to play dead, because Mr. Painter did not much like anything he
hadn't killed himself. That is how we got the playing-dead habit, which
others sometimes try and call it 'playing 'possum,' because nobody can
do it so well as our family, and I judge some of our family didn't do it
perfectly the one and only chance they got to try it, or else Mr.
Painter was smarter, or hungrier, at those times.

"Well, my ancestors got so that they could hold to those limbs very
firmly with their hands and feet, and Mr. Painter had a hard time to
shake them down, though he didn't like to give up, and would go on
shaking all day, sometimes, until my folks would get tired out. They
used to try to hold and brace themselves with their tails, too, but we
had just big, ornamental tails in those days, covered with thick, bushy
hair, and of very little use, like Mr. Squirrel's and Mr. 'Coon's."

When Mr. 'Possum made that remark, Mr. 'Coon and Mr. Squirrel sat up
quite straight, and were just about to say something, but Mr. Rabbit
motioned to them and said "'Sh!" and Mr. 'Possum went right on, without
noticing that anyth