limestones, 'to
know would ye let me make a little limestone broth over your fire, until
I'll make my dinner?'

'Limestone broth!' says they to him again: 'what's that, _aroo_?'

'Broth made of limestone,' says he; 'what else?'

'We never heard of such a thing,' says they.

'Why, then, you may hear it now,' says he, 'an' see it also, if you'll
gi' me a pot an' a couple o' quarts o' soft water.'

'You can have it an' welcome,' says they.

So they put down the pot an' the water, an' my father went over an' tuk
a chair hard by the pleasant fire for himself, an' put down his two
limestones to boil, an' kept stirrin' them round like stir-about.

Very good--well, by-an'-by, when the wather began to boil--''Tis
thickening finely,' says my father; 'now if it had a grain o' salt at
all, 'twould be a great improvement to it.'

'Raich down the salt-box, Nell,' says the man o' the house to his wife.
So she did.

'Oh, that's the very thing, just,' says my father, shaking some of it
into the pot. So he stirred it again a while, looking as sober as a
minister. By-an'-by he takes the spoon he had stirring it an' tastes it.

'It is very good now,' says he, 'altho' it wants something yet.'

'What is it?' says they.

'Oyeh, wisha nothin',' says he; 'maybe 't is only fancy o' me.'

'If it's anything we can give you,' says they, 'you're welcome to it.'

''Tis very good as it is,' says he; 'but when I'm at home, I find it
gives it a fine flavor just to boil a little knuckle o' bacon, or mutton
trotters, or anything that way along with it.'

'Raich hether that bone o' sheep's head we had at dinner yesterday,
Nell,' says the man o' the house.

'Oyeh, don't mind it,' says my father; 'let it be as it is.'

'Sure if it improves it, you may as well,' says they.

'Baithershin!' says my father, putting it down.

So after boiling it a good piece longer, ''Tis fine limestone broth,'
says he, 'as ever was tasted, and if a man had a few piatez,' says he,
looking at a pot o' them that was smoking in the chimney corner, 'he
couldn't desire a better dinner.'

They gave him the piatez, and he made a good dinner of themselves and
the broth, not forgetting the bone, which he polished equal to chaney
before he let it go. The people themselves tasted it, an' tho't it as
good as any mutton broth in the world."

THE KNOCKOUT

_Adapted From The Autobiography of_ DAVY CROCKETT

One day as I was walking through the woods, I came t