“I dunno yit, but I jest guess you’d better be gittin’ reddy to leg it, fer he’s hitchin’ his old nag ’t the side o’ the road. _Yis_, sir, I bleeve he’s a-cummin’. Shoopegg, you’d better be gittin’ aout o’ this,” and he commenced to drop hap-hazard from his lofty perch. In a moment, however, he seemed to change his mind, and paused, once more upon the watch. “Say, fellers,” he again broke in, as we were preparing for a retreat, “he’s gone off to’rd the cedars; he ain’t cummin’ this way at _all_.” So he again ascended into the tree-top, and finished his shaking in peace, and we our picking also. There was still another tree, with elegant large nuts, that we had all concluded to “finish up on.” It would not do to leave it. They were the largest and thinnest-shelled nuts in town, and there were over a bushel in sight on the branch tips. Shoopegg was up among them in two minutes, and they were showered down in torrents as before. And what splendid, perfect nuts they were! We bagged them with eager hands, picked the ground all clean, and, with jolly chuckles at our luck, were just about thinking of starting for home with our well-rounded sacks, when a change came over the spirit of our dreams. There was a suspicious noise in the shrubbery near by, and in a moment more we heard our doom. “Jest yeu look _ee_ah, yeu boys!” exclaimed a high-pitched voice from the neighboring shrubbery, accompanied by the form of Deacon Turney, approaching at a brisk pace, hardly thirty feet away. “Don’t yeu think yeu’ve got jest abaout _enuff_ o’ them nuts?” Of course a wild panic ensued, in which we made for the bags and dear life; but Turney was prepared and ready for the emergency, and, raising a huge old shot-gun, he levelled it, and yelled, “Don’t any on ye stir ner move, or by Christopher I’ll blow the heels clean off’n the hull _pile_ on ye. I’d _shoot_ ye quicker’n _lightni’_.” And we believed him, for his aim was true, and his whole expression was not that of a man who was trifling. I never shall forget the uncomfortable sensation that I experienced as I looked into the muzzle of that double-barrelled shot-gun, and saw both hammers fully raised too. And I can clearly see now the squint and the glaring eye that glanced along those barrels. There was a wonderfully persuasive power lurking in those horizontal tubes; so I at once hastened to inform the deacon that we were “not going to run.” “Wa’al,” he drawled, “it looked a leetle thet _way_, I thort, a spell _ago_;” and he still kept us in the field of his weapon, till at length I exclaimed, in desperation. “For gracious sake! point that gun in some other _way_, will you?” “Wa’al, _no_! I’m not fer pintin’ it ennywhar else jest _yit_--not until you’ve sot them ar _bags_ daown agin, jist whar ye _got_ ’em, every _one_ on ye.” The bags were speedily replaced, and he slowly lowered his gun. [Illustration: AFTER THE SHELL-BARKS]