Now we were supplied with meat for a month, with good fat venison, not with quails, as God supplied his ancient people over three thousand years before, in the wilderness of Sinai, or at the Tabernacle, where six hundred thousand men wept for flesh, and there went forth a wind and brought quails from the Red Sea. No doubt they were fat and delicious, and the wind let them fall by the camp, and around about the camp, for some distance. They were easily caught by hungry men. Thus was the wind freighted with flesh to feed that peculiar people a whole month and more. When the terrific wind, that helped us to capture the deer, raged through the tree-tops it sounded like distant thunder. It bent the tall trees, in unison, all one way, as if they agreed to bow together before the power that was upon them. When they straightened up they shook their tops as though angry at one another, broke off some of the limbs which they had borne for years, and sent them crashing to the ground. Some of the trees were blown up by the roots, and if allowed to remain would in time form such little mounds as we children took to be Indian graves when we first came into the woods. Those little mounds are monuments, which mark the places where some of those ancient members of the forest stood centuries ago, and they will remain through future ages unless obliterated by the hand of man. We thought that the wind blew harder here than in York State, where we came from. We supposed the reason was that the mountains and hills of New York broke the wind off, and this being a flat country with nothing to break the force of the wind, except the woods, we felt it more severely. CHAPTER X. HOW WE GOT INTO TROUBLE ONE NIGHT, AND I SCARED. One warm day in winter father and I went hunting. I had the rifle that day. We went south, crossed the windfall and Reed creek, and went into what we called the "big woods." We followed deer, but seemed to be very unlucky, for I couldn't shoot them. We travelled in the woods all day and hunted the best we could. Just at sundown, deer that have been followed all day are apt to stop and browse a little. Then if the wind is favorable and blowing from them to you, it is possible to get a shot at them; but if the wind is blowing from you to them, you can't get within gunshot of them. They will scent you. They happened to be on the windward side, as we called it. I got a shot at one and killed it. It was late and, carelessly, I didn't load the rifle. It being near night, I thought I should not have a chance to shoot anything more. It was my custom to load the rifle after shooting, and if I didn't have any use for it before, when I got near home, I shot at a mark on a tree or something. In that way I practiced shooting and let the folks know I was coming. In this way I also kept the rifle from rusting, as sometimes it was wet; when I got into the house I cleaned it off and wiped it out.