y upward, and its surface was
roughened like the face of a file. When the rifleman had loaded his gun
he opened the pan, poured in a little powder and closed it again. In the
hammer was a piece of flint, and when the trigger was pulled the flint
came down with great force into the pan, scraping the roughened steel as
it came, and raising the pan cover on its hinge. It thus deposited a
shower of sparks in the pan, set fire to the powder there and through it
to the charge in the gun.

Sam's object was merely to get fire, however,--not to discharge his
rifle,--wherefore, without reloading it, after shooting the opossum, he
merely filled the pan with powder, placed the greasy rag in it, and
cocking the gun pulled the trigger. In a moment the rag was burning, and
before many minutes had passed, Sam had a good fire burning in and over
the hole he had dug. He then skinned and dressed the opossum, stopping
now and then to replenish the fire and to throw all the live coals into
the hole as they formed. Within an hour the hole was full of burning
coals, and hot enough, Sam thought, for his purpose. He cut a number of
green twigs and collected a quantity of the long gray moss. He then
removed all the fire from the hole, the sides and bottom of which were
almost red hot, and passing a twig through the opossum, lowered it to
the middle of the hole, where the twig rested on ledges provided for
that purpose. This brought the dressed animal into the centre of the
hole, without permitting it to touch either the sides or the bottom. He
then laid twigs across the top of the hole, covered them with moss, and
threw nearly a foot of loose earth over the moss. The sides and bottom
of the hole, as I have said, were very hot, and Sam's plan was to keep
the heat in until it should roast the meat thoroughly. That his plan
was a good one, I know from experience, having roasted more than one
turkey in that way. It is, in fact, the very best way in which meat of
any kind can possibly be roasted at all, as it lets none of the flavor
escape in the form of gases.

Sam waited patiently for an hour, when, opening his earth oven, he found
his opossum cooked to a rich, crisp brown. He ate a heartier and more
wholesome breakfast that morning than he had eaten for weeks, and felt
afterwards altogether better and stronger than before. The breakfast
would have been an excellent one at any time, as the flesh of the
opossum tastes almost exactly like that of a