"Ye see, kumrade, I war out arter deer jest as we are the day; only it had got to be nigh sundown, i'deed, an' I hedn't emptied my rifle the hul day. Fact is, I hedn't sot eye on a thing wuth a charge o' powder an' lead. I war afut; an' it are a good six mile from this to my shanty. I didn't like goin' home empty-handed, specially as I knowed we war empty-housed; an' the ole 'ooman wanted somethin' to git us a pound or two o' coffee an' sugar with. So I thort I shed stay all night i' the wuds, trustin' to gettin' a shot at a stray buck or a turkey in the early mornin'. I war jest in this spot; but it looked quite different then. The hul place about hyar war kivered wi' the tallest o' cane, an' so thick, a coon ked sca'ce worm his way through it; but sence then the under-scrub's all been burnt out. So I tuk up my quarters for the night under that 'ere big cyprus. The ground war dampish; for thar hed been a spell o' rain. So I tuk out my bowie, an' cut me enough o' the green cane to make a sort o' a shake-down. It war comf'table enough; an' in the twinklin' o' a buck's tail, I war soun' asleep. I slep' like a possum, till daybreak, an' then I war awoke by the worst noises as ever rousted a feller out o' his slumber. I heerd a skreekin' an' screamin' an' screevin', as ef all the saws in Massissippi wor bein' sharped 'ithin twenty yards o' my ear. It all kim from overhead,--from out the top o' the cyprus; an' it war the callin' o' the baldy eagles; it wa'n't the fust time I had listened to them hyar. 'That's a neest,' sez I to myself; 'an' young 'uns, too. That's why the birds is makin' sech a rumpis.' Not that I cared much about a eagle's nest, nor the birds neyther. But jest then I remembered my ole 'ooman had told me that there war a rich Englishman at the tavern in Grand Gulf who offered no eend o' money for a brace o' young baldy eagles. "So in coorse I clomb the tree. 'T warn't so easy as you may s'pose. Thar war forty feet o' the stem 'ithout a branch, an' so smooth thet a catamount kedn't 'a' scaled it. I thort at fust that the cyprus wa'n't climable no how; but jest then I seed a big fox grape-vine, that, arter sprawlin' up another tree clost by, left it an' sloped off to the one whar the baldies had thar nest. This war the very thing I wanted,--a sort o' Jaykup's ladder; an', 'ithout wastin' a minit, I shinned up the grape-vine. The shaky thing wobbled about, till I war well-nigh pitched back to the groun'; an' thar war a time when I thort seriously o' slippin' down agin.