rittenden's gone to turn me out,
they says. Then they p'ints down to a handful of close-wove bresh an'
stunted timber an' allows that this maraudin' cat-o-mount is hidin'
thar; they sees him go skulkin' in.

"'Gents, I ain't above admittin' that the news puts my heart to a
canter. I'm brave; but conflicts with wild an' savage beasts is to me a
novelty an' while I faces my fate without a flutter, I'm yere to say I'd
sooner been in pursoot of minks or raccoons or some varmint whose
grievous cap'bilities I can more ackerately stack up an' in whose merry
ways I'm better versed. However, the dauntless blood of my grandsire
mounts in my cheek; an' as if the shade of that old Trojan is thar
personal to su'gest it, I searches forth a flask an' renoos my sperit;
thus qualified for perils, come in what form they may, I resolootely
stands my hand.

"'Thar's forty dogs if thar's one in our company as we pauses at the
Skinner cross-roads. An' when the Crittenden yooth returns, he brings
with him the Rickett boys an' forty added dogs. Which it's worth a
ten-mile ride to get a glimpse of that outfit of canines! Thar's every
sort onder the canopy: thar's the stolid hound, the alert fice, the
sapient collie; that is thar's individyool beasts wherein the hound, or
fice, or collie seems to preedominate as a strain. The trooth is thar's
not that dog a-whinin' about our hosses' fetlocks who ain't proudly
descended from fifteen different tribes, an' they shorely makes a motley
mass meetin'. Still, they're good, zealous dogs; an' as they're going to
go for'ard an' take most of the resks of that panther, it seems
invidious to criticize 'em.

"'One of the Twitty boys rides down an' puts the eighty or more dogs
into the bresh. The rest of us lays back an' strains our eyes. Thar he
is! A shout goes up as we descries the panther stealin' off by a far
corner. He's headin' along a hollow that's full of bresh an' baby timber
an' runs parallel with the pike. Big an' yaller he is; we can tell from
the slight flash we gets of him as he darts into a second clump of
bushes. With a cry--what young Crittenden calls a "view halloo,"--we
goes stampeedin' down the pike in pursoot.

"'Our dogs is sta'nch; they shore does themse'fs proud. Singin' in
twenty keys, reachin' from growls to yelps an' from yelps to shrillest
screams, they pushes dauntlessly on the fresh trail of their terrified
quarry. Now an' then we gets a squint of the panther as he skulks from