After all my boasting about the abundance of deer in these post-oak forests the reader is, I dare say, prepared to learn that with a party of fifteen the spoil of a ten-days hunt would be one thousand head at the very least. Great will be his surprise therefore to learn that at the close of our first day's hunt we returned to camp without one solitary buck or doe to show to our disgusted cooks. Never had the game been so scarce, and yet not a man of us all had the same loads in his gun with which he had sallied gaily forth full of hope in the morning. One fine buck alone had emptied just thirty barrels for us. Flushed on the extreme right, he had bounded along in front of the whole line, a trifle out of range, perhaps, and each one of us had given him a roaring double salute. As the rolling thunder approached me I almost ceased to breathe. What were conjugations and declensions and rules of three compared with this! It was like a battle, as I have since discovered, with the notable difference that our side made all the noise, and the deer did not shoot back. But none of us had been able, in the language of Mr. Sam Weller's Dick Turpin ditty, to “prewail upon him for to stop.” Other shots at other deer all of us had, but we supped on bacon that evening. [Illustration: 0075] SECOND PART |ONE who has never tried the experiment can have no idea how easy it is to miss when firing from horseback at a buck who sends your heart up into your mouth by springing up from beneath your horse's heels, and then speeds away, twisting and turning among the boles of the trees. Men who could bring down a partridge with each barrel have been known to shoot away half a bag of shot before they began to get the hang of the thing. The shades of evening were falling. Humiliating though it was, we had fallen, too, with a will on our gameless supper. “S-t! Listen! What's that?” We pricked up our ears. Presently there came softly echoing from far away in the forest a long-drawn cry, ringing, melodious, clear as a bugle call. “Billy!” The welkin rang with our joyous shouts. Half our party sprang to their feet and red-hot coffee splashed from tin cups. “Hurrah!” “Marse Billy got the keenest holler I ever hear!” chuckled Beverly. “Bound he fetch luck 'long wid him! No mo' bacon for supper arter dis.”