till flying and his
ramrod going off with 'em, and he was some considerable astonished
and a good deal put about at losing his ramrod."

*****

"Now here's the queer part of it: Those seven geese were blinded,
of course, with a ramrod strung right through their eyes, but the
life in a wild goose is powerful strong and they kept flying on
just the same, until they went out of sight, right in the
direction of granddad's home. But he got home and had hung up his
gun without seeing anything more of them and he thought his ramrod
was sure gone for good. Then grandmother came to him, kind of
scared, saying she heard spirit rappings on the pantry wall.
Granddad heard the noise, a sort of tapping, but he couldn't see
anything until he looked out the pantry window.

"Yes, there they were seven of 'em, hung on the ramrod and the
ramrod hung on a blind-hook, just outside Granddad's pantry
window, their wings still flapping a little and making that
rapping sound, just as if they were knocking to be let in at the
pantry of the man that had shot 'em. All the relations used to
come to grandfather's for Thanksgiving, and thirty-five of 'em sat
down to dinner that year and every one of 'em had all the roast
goose they could eat."

Frightened or injured game birds do perform strange feats as many
an honest huntsman will tell you. I myself have a neighbor, no
relative of Jotham's, who shot at a partridge in the woods a
quarter of a mile from his house and saw the bird fly away. When
he got home a half-hour later he found his pantry window broken
and a partridge lying dead on the pantry floor, either the one he
had shot at or another just as good and as the proverb has it, one
story is good until another one is told. Jotham usually caps his
list with the following:

"I guess the greatest wild goose hunting grandfather ever did was
the time the big flock got caught in the ice storm. It came in
November, a foot of soft snow and then one of those rainstorms
that freeze as soon as the rain touches anything. Every twig on
the trees that storm was as big as your wrist with ice and there
was an inch or two of clear ice on everything and more coming all
the time, when grandfather heard a big flock of wild geese
honking. They didn't seem to be going over, but their voices hung
in the air right over the big steep hill from the barn up into the
back pasture. After they'd been honking up there for some time
grandfather went up to see what it