In Davy’s time there were no jam closets for him to rob, for the cupboard was always empty, except for the great loaves of bread that were baked from corn and rye. Everything being devoured as fast as it was cooked, none of the boy’s time was taken up with watching the pantry, and his time was his own. If there happened to be such neighborhood events as corn-huskin’s, ’lasses-b’ilin’s, log-rollin’s, bean-stringin’s, or butter-stirrin’s, which still prevail in the mountains, there was a respite for his victims. Upon one occasion, when his parents had gone to a corn-husking, Davy and one of his brothers, with another boy, rounded up all the hogs that were fattening on beech-nuts in the woods, penned them up, cut off their tails, and let them go. It was some weeks later when their villainy was detected. They were forced to confess that they were guilty, and that the tails had been roasted in hot ashes and eaten. Such mild pastimes as robbing birds’ nests were diversified by practical jokes on the travelling public, and many a beating fell to the lot of the Crockett boys. One of the tricks they played was to take the calves away from their bovine mothers after dark. This meant all-night bawling, and human wakefulness, until the cows were united with the lost offspring. If Elisha had lived in the Tennessee mountains, the bears would have been busy all the time. When Davy was twelve, in 1798, he had become a strong and useful lad, with a fully developed conscience. The wishes of his parents were the only law he had known, and when at last the time came when his father said to him, as Saul to him of old, “David, go, and the Lord be with thee,” he went forth as a pilgrim. It is not certain with what words he was sent forth, but he seems to have made no appeal from the bargain that sent him four hundred miles over the mountains, on foot, in the keeping of a stranger. Perhaps he had come to know that his father found it hard to feed so many mouths. At any rate, he took up the long march with an old German, Jacob Siler, who was bound to Virginia with a herd of cattle, where he proposed to remain. How many have read with sympathy and keen appreciation Davy’s simple story of his departure “with a heavy heart,” perhaps never to return!