The boys stood amazed at this innovation on the part of Mr. Coon, whose sense of etiquette does not usually permit him to tackle the dogs until the falling of the tree throws the hapless creature into their jaws. How he distinguished the sound in all that shrill tumult Skimpy could never say;—a low growl, exceeding in ferocity aught he had ever before heard, caught his attention. He moved back a pace and held the torch aloft. There, upon the bole of the tree, slowly descending from limb to limb, with lissome noiseless tread, with great yellow eyes, illuminated by the flare, was a full-grown female panther, made bold enough to face the light by the imminence of the danger, for the cutting down of the tree meant certain dislodgment amongst the dogs and the boys. This was the denizen of the oak, the discovery of whom had made the coon prefer the dogs. Skimpy needed but a single glance. He said afterward that it flashed upon him in a moment that the animal’s young were perhaps in a crevice of the great wall of rock close at hand, and that for this reason she had not fled from the noise and the lights. Skimpy dashed his torch to the ground, and crying “Painter! Painter!” he set out at a pace which has seldom been excelled. All the torches were flared upward. The creature glared down at the boys and growled. There was not a gun in the party. Obadiah in a sort of mental aberration flung his axe into the tree; it almost grazed the animal’s nose, then fell upon the back of a yelping dog. Each boy seemed to announce his flight by taking up the panic-stricken cry of “Painter!” The dogs had discovered that more had been treed than the coon, which at last had been killed. They would not heed the whistlings and the callings of their masters, and as the boys ran a tremendous yelping and growling announced that the panther had sprung from the tree amidst the pack. Presently something, with its tail between its legs, shot by the hindmost boy, and another, and yet another. The dogs had felt the panther’s teeth and claws and were leaving, but none of these fugitives was Bose. “Oh,” cried Skimpy, “le’s go back—le’s go back—Bose will be bodaciously eat up! Le’s go back an’ call Bose off!” “Call the painter on, ye mean!” exclaimed Ike. “Ye can’t do nuthin’ ter hurt a painter ’thout ye hed a gun!” “Oh Bose!” plained another of the Sawyers in a heart-wrung voice. “What’ll mam do ’thout Bose! Sech a shepherd! Sech a dog ter take keer o’ the baby, too! Sech a gyard dog!” For Bose’s virtues were not all belligerent, but shone resplendent in times of peace. “Oh _Bose_,” he shrieked down the wind, “let the painter be!” “Oh _Bose_!” cried Obadiah in a tone of obituary. “Sech a coon dog! _Bose!_ An’ a swimmer! _Bose!_ How he used ter drive up the cow! Oh, _Bose_!” “Ye talk like nobody in the mountings hed a dog but you-uns,” panted one of the fleeing hunters. “Ye ought ter be thankful ye air out’n the painter’s jaws—’thout no gun!”