As I stood there, in my stocking feet, and feeling a few inches taller, I had no doubt that the deer was dead, but I was all at once startled by the danger I was in of losing him. The current before the sand-bank kept moving his body, and I saw plainly that in a few minutes it might drift him into swifter waters, where he might sink. To lose the game, at any hazard, was out of the question. In a twinkling, my pantaloons and shirt were off, besides the clothes of which I had previously denuded myself, and a second after, I had plunged head-first into the Tennessee. The current bore me down stream like an arrow, but an accomplishment, picked up in truant days, came in good stead, and with a few, strong strokes, I reached and climbed out on a sand-bar, at some distance below where I had made the plunge. As I rose to my feet, I was dumb-founded to see an antlered head rise from behind the rocks where lay the supposed slaughtered deer. Then the whole blue form of a buck appeared in view, and leaped from sight, up the rocks, and under the trees on the mountain’s steep front. The sight chilled me more than the waters of the Tennessee. It was the very buck I had shot. I hurried up the bank, clambered over the cold rocks, and reached the sand-bar where my game had fallen. It was bare! I could not convince myself of its being a dream, for there were the imprints of the hoofs. I picked up the shattered prong of an antler. It had been cut off by a charge of buckshot. The mystery of the fall and subsequent disappearance was explained. My shot had hit one of his antlers and simply stunned him for a moment. Just then a voice rang from the rocks across the river: “Are ye taking a swim?” “No, just cooling off,” I answered. It was Ben Lester who spoke, and with him was Sanford and the dogs. “Where is the deer that came this way? What luck have you had? Why aint you here watching?” yelled Sanford. I did not stop to answer his volley of questions, but plunged into the river, and reached the opposite bank. Then, dressing myself, I explained. “Well,” said Lester, as I finished, “no more could have been expected.” “Why?” I asked rather indignantly; for, although I fully realized that I had proved myself a miserable shot, I did not like being accused of it in terms like these. “No one could have done any better,” he answered. “No better?” “Not a bit. It was the duck-legged buck!” “Are you sure?” I asked, feeling like a drowning man sighting a buoy; for here lay the shadow of an excuse for my failure. “Of course. I saw him leave you. I’ll bet my last dollar that he has inside of him a mad-stone as big as your fist!” Then shaking his head, and talking half aloud to himself; “Strange, strange, strange! Fifteen years old, and still alive!”