It was but a ower’s job to get over this one; but after they got on the top, they found the ground on tother side ’thout much trouble. This time the bottle was broke, and they come monstrous near having a fight about the catastrophy. But it was a very good thing, it was; for, after crossin’ two or three more branches, and climbin’ as many more fences, it got to be daylight, and they found out that they _had been climbin’ the same fence all night_, not more’n a hundred yards from whar they first cum to it. Bill Sweeney ses he can’t account for it no other way but that the licker sort o’ turned their heads; and he says he does really believe, if it hadn’t gin out, they’d been climbin’ the same fence, and wadin’ the same branch, till yet. Bill promised his wife to jine the Temperance Society, if she won’t never say no more ’bout that coon-hunt. XI. A RIDE WITH OLD KIT KUNCKER. Our old friend, Kit Kuncker, as he put us to bed on the night of a big frolic at his house, exacted a promise that we would visit him again, shortly thereafter; promising us, on his part, that he would ride all over the settlement with us; and more especially, that he would go with us to the house of Jim Kent, whose sister, Beck, was so ugly “that the flies wouldn’t light on her face,” and about whose going to mill, he assured me, there was a very pleasant story to be told. Poor old Kit! But the other day we saw him—and how altered by the lapse of a few years! His head has become white, his figure more bent, and his laughing old face—merry still!—was furrowed with an hundred additional wrinkles. His eye, too, was dull—had lost the twinkle that used so mischievously to light up his countenance. And then, too, he walked with a staff; and when he went to mount “Fiddler Bill,” he said, “Help me, Squire,” instead of vaulting into the saddle, as of yore! “Thank you, Squire. God bless your Union heart—old Hickory and the Union for ever! I’m gittin’ old now, Squire, and can’t git about, like I used to”—the old man sighed—“Fiddler Bill is old, too—notice how gray his face is—we’re all gittin’ old—yer Aunt Hetty as well’s the rest; and, God bless yer soul, Squire,” (here the old man warmed into animation), “_she’s uglier than ever—uglier than the devil_—he! he! ya! ya! It’s wuth while coming, jist to take a look at her! With that old long bonnet on”—here the old fellow bent down on his horse’s neck, in a paroxysm of laughter—“he! he! hea! ya! ya! and her mouth skrootched up, ya! ya! the go-to-meetin’ way; I’ll be cust, ef she ain’t so bad to look at, it’s enuff to fotch sickness in the family! But,” he added, wiping the tears from his eyes, “Squire, I’m old now, yer Aunt Hetty’s old, and Fiddler Bill is old—all old! old! old! Ah, me!” But we are digressing. It was of our Ride with old Kit, in 1840, that we began to write—and not of his chattering in 1849.