Bimeby he got tired, and
come back lookin' kind o' skeered, and says I: 'Ye're a purty dog, ain't
ye?' Jest then I hearn the thing nigher, and I begun to hear the brush
crack. I knowed I'd got to meet some new sort of a creetur, and I jest
stepped back and took my rifle. When I stood in the door agin, I seen
somethin' comin'. It was a walkin' on two legs like a man, and it was a
man, or somethin' that looked like one. He come toward the cabin, and
stopped about three rod off. He had long white hair that looked jest
like silk under the moon, and his robes was white, and he had somethin'
in his hand that shined like silver. I jest drew up my rifle, and says
I: 'Whosomever you be, stop, or I'll plug ye.' What do ye s'pose he did?
He jest took that shinin' thing and swung it round and round his head,
and I begun to feel the ha'r start, and up it come all over me. Then he
put suthin' to his mouth, and then I knowed it was a trumpet, and he
jest blowed till all the woods rung, and rung, and rung agin, and I
hearn it comin' back from the mountain, louder nor it was itself. And
then says I to myself: 'There's another one, and Jim Fenton's a goner;'
but I didn't let on that I was skeered, and says I to him: 'That's a
good deal of a toot; who be ye callin' to dinner?' And says he: 'It's
the last day! Come to jedgment! I'm the Angel Gabr'el!' 'Well,' says I,
'if ye're the Angel Gabr'el, cold lead won't hurt ye, so mind yer eyes!'
At that I drew a bead on 'im, and if ye'll b'lieve it, I knocked a tin
horn out of his hands and picked it up the next mornin', and he went off
into the woods like a streak o' lightnin'. But my ha'r hain't never come
down."

Jim stroked the refractory locks toward his forehead with his huge hand,
and they rose behind it like a wheat-field behind a summer wind. As he
finished the manipulation, Mr. Buffum gave symptoms of life. Like a
volcano under premonitory signs of an eruption, a wheezy chuckle seemed
to begin somewhere in the region of his boots, and rise, growing more
and more audible, until it burst into a full demonstration, that was
half laugh and half cough.

"Why, what are you laughing at, father?" exclaimed Miss Buffum.

The truth was that Mr. Buffum had not slept at all. The simulation of
sleep had been indulged in simply to escape the necessity of talking.

"It was old Tilden," said Mr. Buffum, and then went off into another fit
of coughing and laughing that nearly strangled him.

"I won