On leaving the highway that leads nearest to the hunting ground, the way of the coon hunters takes them, in darkness or feeble lantern light, over rough and uncertain footing, till the cornfield's edge is reached and the dogs cast off. Away go the hounds, their course only indicated by the rustling of the corn leaves, as they range through the field, until one old truth-teller gives tongue on the track of a coon who perhaps has brought his whole family out on a nocturnal picnic. The hounds sweep straight away, in full cry, on the hot scent to hill or swamp, where their steadfast baying proclaims that the game is treed. Then follows a pell-mell scramble toward the musical uproar. Stones, cradle knolls, logs, stumps, mud holes, brambles and all the inanimate enemies that lie in wait for man when he hastens in the dark, combine to trip, bump, bruise, sprain, scratch, and bemire the hurrying hunters. Then when all have gathered at the centre of attraction, where the excited hounds are raving about the boll of some great tree, the best and boldest climber volunteers to go aloft into the upper darkness and shake the quarry down or shoot him if may be. If he succeeds in accomplishing the difficult task, what a mêlée ensues when the coon crashes through the branches to the ground and becomes the erratic centre of the wild huddle of dogs and men. Fewer voices never broke the stillness of night with sounds more unearthly than the medley of raging, yelping, growling, cheering, and vociferous orders given forth by dogs, coon, and hunters, while hillside and woodland toss to and fro a more discordant badinage of echo. The coon is not a great beast, but a tough and sharp-toothed one, who carries beneath his gray coat and fat ribs a stout heart and wonderful vitality; and a tussle with a veteran of the tribe of cornfield robbers tests the pluck of the dogs. If the coon takes refuge in a tree too tall and limbless for his pursuers to climb, there is nothing for them but to keep watch and ward till daylight discovers him crouched on his lofty perch. A huge fire enlivens the long hours of guard keeping. A foraging party repairs to the nearest cornfield for roasting ears, and the hunters shorten the slow nighttide with munching scorched corn, sauced by joke and song and tales of the coon hunts of bygone years. The waning moon throbs into view above a serrated hill-crest, then climbs the sky, while the shadows draw eastward, then pales in the dawn, and when it is like a blotch of white cloud in the zenith, a sunrise gun welcomes day and brings the coon tumbling to earth. Or perhaps not a coon, but some vagrant house cat is the poor reward of the long watch. Then the weary hunters plod homeward to breakfast and to nail their trophies to the barn door.