"O yes--though I can't promise that you will see anything of _Venus_ in the woods, you may enjoy to your heart's content the noble art of _venerie_. The Obion bottom is a very paradise for hunters. It was it that gave birth to the celebrated Crockett." "On that account it will be all the more interesting to me; and, from what you say, it is just the sort of place I should have chosen to _squat_ upon." "_By_ the by," interrupted my friend, looking a little grave as he spoke, "your making use of that familiar phrase, recalls the circumstance you mentioned just now. Did I understand you to say, there was a _squatter_ on the land?" "There _was_ one--so the agent has told me; but whether he be still _squatted_ there, the official could not say." "Rather awkward, if he be," rejoined my friend, in a sort of musing soliloquy; while, with his eyes fixed upon the ground, he kept pulling his "goatee" to its full length. "In what way awkward?" I asked in some surprise. "How can _that_ signify?" "A great deal. These squatters are queer fellows--_ugly_ customers to deal with--especially when you come to turn them out of their house and home, as they consider it. It is true, they have the _pre-emption right_--that is, they may purchase, if they please, and send you to seek a location elsewhere; but this is a privilege those gentry rarely please to indulge in--being universally too poor to purchase." "What then?" "Their motto is, for `him to keep who can.' The old adage, `possession being nine points of the law,' is, in the squatter's code, no dead-letter, I can assure you." "Do you mean, that the fellow might refuse to turn out?" "It depends a good deal on what sort of a fellow he is. They are not all alike. If he should chance to be one of the obstinate and pugnacious kind, you are likely enough to have trouble with him." "But surely the law--" "Will aid you in ousting him--that's what you were going to say?" "I should expect so--in Tennessee, at all events." "And you would be disappointed. In almost any other part of the state, you _might_ rely upon legal assistance; but, I fear, that about Swampville you will find society not very different from that you have encountered on the borders of Texas; and you know how little help the law could afford you _there_, in the enforcement of such a claim?"