f Mrs. Stump, and many other
things that could not be procured by a rifle. Even the rifle itself
required food not to be found in the forest.

Presuming on our intimacy, I asked, "How do you manage to live? You
don't appear to make anything, nor do I see any signs of cultivation.
How then do you support yourselves?"

"Them duds thar," answered my host, pointing to a corner of his
tree-cabin. I looked and saw the skins of several animals,--among which
I recognized those of the "painter," "possum," and "'coon," along with a
haunch or two of recently killed venison. "I sell 'em, boy; the skins to
the storekeepers, and the deer-meat to anybody as 'll buy it."

Old Zeb's shooting appeared marvellous to me. He could "bark" a squirrel
in the top of the tallest tree, or kill it by a bullet through its eye.
He used to boast, in a quiet way, that he never spoilt a skin, though it
was only that of a "contemptible squir'l."

What most interested me was his tales of adventure, of which he was
often the hero; one possessed especial interest, partly from its own
essential oddness, and partly from its hinging on a phenomenon which I
had more than once witnessed. I allude to the "caving in," or breaking
down, of the banks of the Mississippi River, caused by the undermining
of the current, when large strips of land, often whole acres, thickly
studded with gigantic trees, slip into the water, to be "swished" away
with a violence eclipsing the fury of fabled Charybdis. It was at the
time of these land-slides that old Zeb had met with this adventure,
which, by the way, came very near killing him.

I shall try to set it forth in his own piquant _patois_, as nearly as I
can transcribe it from the tablets of my memory. I was indebted for the
tale to a chance circumstance, for old Zeb seldom volunteered a story,
unless something suggested it. We had killed a fine buck, that had run
several hundred times his length with the bullet in his body, and fallen
within a few feet of the bank of the great river. While stopping to
dress him, old Zeb looked around keenly, exclaiming, "If this ain't the
place whar I war _trapped in a tree_! Thar's the very saplin' itself!"

I looked at the "saplin'." It was a swamp cypress of some thirty feet in
girth, by at least a hundred and fifty in height.

"Trapped in a tree!" I echoed with emphatic interest, perceiving that he
was upon the edge of some odd adventure; and, desirous of tempting him
to the relati