's hat, and it yielded a bar of soap and a dozen tallow candles!
If old Smearcase continues to fool away his hard-earned wealth in that
manner, his friends ought to buy an injunction on his _will!_

The Wolf Slayer.

In 1800 the most of the State of Ohio, and nearly all of Indiana, was a
dense wilderness, where the gaunt wolf and naked savage were masters of
the wild woods and fertile plains, which now, before the sturdy blows of
the pioneer's axe, and the farmer's plough, has been with almost magical
effect converted into rich farms and thriving, beautiful villages.

In the early settlement of the west, the pioneers suffered not only from
the ruthless savage, but fearfully from the _wolf_. Many are the tales
of terror told of these ferocious enemies of the white man, and his
civilization. Many was the hunter, Indian as well as the Angle-Saxon,
whose bones, made marrowless by the prowling hordes of the dark forest,
have been scattered and bleached upon the war-path or Indian trail of
the back-woods. In 1812-13, my father was contractor for the
north-western army, under command of Gen. Wm. Henry Harrison. He
supplied the army with beef; he bought up cattle along the Sciota valley
and Ohio river, and drove them out to the army, then located at
Sandusky. Chillicothe, then, was a small settlement on the Sciota river,
and protected by a block house or rude fort, in which the inhabitants
could scramble if the Indians made their appearance. My father resided
here, and having collected a large drove of cattle, he set out up the
valley with a few mounted men as a kind of guard to protect the drove
against the prowling minions of Tecumseh.

The third day out, late in the afternoon, being very warm weather, there
arose a most terrific thunder-storm; the huge trees, by the violence of
the wind and sharp lightning, were uprooted and rent into thousands of
particles, and the panic-stricken herd scattered in every direction. I
have seen the havoc made in forests through which one of these tornadoes
has taken its way, or I should be incredulous to suppose whole acres of
trees, hundreds of years old, could be torn up, or snapped off like
reeds upon the river side.

The fury of the whirlwind seemed to increase as the night grew darker,
until cattle, men and horses, were killed, crippled and dispersed. My
father crawled under the lee of a large sycamore that had fell, and
here, partly protected from the rain and falling timber