hey are so shy that you never can get sight of one, though the
lumbermen tell stories of having fights with them. They've got long
claws and could scratch like sin, if they were cornered up anywheres."

"Sometimes they will follow after anybody for a long ways," said Thomas.
"Father told me that, when he was a boy, the mill stream at the village
got so low one fall that they could not grind wheat or corn there. So
grandpa sent him over to Pride's grist mill, in Willowford, with the
horse and wagon and a load of corn. There were a lot of grists in ahead
of him; and before the miller got around to grind out father's corn, it
was dark, and he had to drive home, thirteen miles, in the evening. It
was woods nearly all the way then; and after he had gone a mile, or two,
and it had come on very dark, so dark he could hardly see his hand
before him, he heard a snarling noise behind him. Turning round, he saw
two bright spots just behind the wagon. It scared him; he started the
horse up, but those spots came right close along after him. Every time
he looked around, he would see them, and he could hear the creature's
feet _pat_ in the road, too, as it ran after the wagon. He kept the
horse trotting along pretty fast and held the butt of his whip all ready
to strike, if the creature jumped into the wagon. It didn't jump in, but
kept near the hind end of the wagon; and it followed father for as much
as two miles, till he met a man with an ox team. He was so taken up
watching for those eyes, back there in the dark, that he came near
running into the ox team; but the man shouted to him to pull up. He told
the man that something had been chasing him; but the eyes had
disappeared; and he saw nothing more of them. Father thinks now that it
was a 'screamer,' though it might have been a panther. There were lots
of panthers in the woods, in those days."

"Are there any now?" asked Theodora, looking a little uncomfortable.

"No," said Addison. "I don't think there are."

"Well, I'm not so sure of that," said Thomas. "There may be one passing
through here, once in a while. Did you ever hear the Old Squire tell the
story of the panther that he and my grandfather killed, when they were
boys?"

"No," said Addison. "The old gentleman never talks much of his early
exploits."

Ellen said that she had heard Gram speak of it once.

"Tell the story, Tom," said I.

"Oh, you get the old gentleman to tell it to you, sometime," replied
Tom. "I c