or perhaps it was the prudence, to keep away from us for nearly
a year.

CHAPTER XXXVI

UNCLE BILLY MURCH'S HAIR-RAISER

At about this time Tom and I were up at the Murches' one evening to see
Willis, and persuaded old Uncle Billy, Willis' grandfather, to tell us
his panther story again. That panther story was a veritable hair-raiser;
and we were never tired of hearing the old man tell it. Owing to our
severe climate panthers were never very numerous in northern New
England--not nearly so numerous as panther stories, in which the
"panther" is usually a Canadian lynx. Even at present we occasionally
hear of a catamount or an "Indian devil"; but perhaps the last real
panther was trapped and shot in the town of Wardsboro, Vermont, in 1875.
There can be no doubt whatever that it was a genuine panther, for its
skin and bones, handsomely mounted, as taxidermists say, can be seen at
any time in the Museum of Natural History in Boston. It is a fine
specimen of the New England variety of the _Felis concolor_ and would no
doubt have proved an ugly customer to meet on a dark night.

No doubt there were panthers larger than that one. According to Uncle
Billy the Wardsboro panther was a mere kitten to the one that he once
encountered when he was a boy of fourteen. Our old Squire, who then was
fifteen years old, was with him and shared the experience. But try as we
would, we never could induce him to tell the story. "You get Uncle Billy
Murch to tell you about that," he would say and laugh. "That's Uncle
Billy's story; he tells it a little better every time, and he has got
that catamount so large now that I am beginning to think that it must
have been a survival of the cave tiger." Yet when pinned down to it the
old Squire admitted that he was with Grandsir Billy on that night and
that they did have an alarming experience with an animal that beyond
doubt was a large and hungry panther.

I must have heard the story ten or twelve times in all, and I recollect
many of Grandsir Billy's words and expressions. But the old man's
vocabulary was "picturesque"; when he was describing exciting events he
was apt to drift into language that was more forceful than choice. It
will be best therefore to give this account substantially as years
later--long after Grandsir Billy had passed away--the old Squire told it
one afternoon when he and I were driving home together from a field day
of the grange.

It seems that back in the days wh