We went to old Kit’s house on the day appointed, at a very early hour, and found the old fellow waiting for us, with “Fiddler Bill” hitched at the gate. “You can’t see yer Aunt Hetty, Squire,” he said, “for she’s laid up with a pain in her jaw. It’s swelled mighty bad, enny how, and makes her look so much better, ’twouldn’t be no curiosity to see her now—so we may as well ride. Another time when she’s at herself—and her ‘ugly’ out in _full bloom_, I’ll show her to you—he! he! yah! That bonnet o’ hern, too, hit’s some. ’Tain’t like nothin’ ever growed, except the baskets the Injin wimmin makes to tote their young ones in!” And the old rascal laughed at his wife and her bonnet, until the woods rang again. Walking our horses leisurely along the road leading down the creek to the river, Uncle Kit, tapping his steed lightly across the neck with his switch, began, as he had promised, to tell us how he obtained him. “You see, Squire, me and my Jim was a haulin’ a load of whiskey up from Wetumpky, in the spring of ’36, and we had a mighty dull old horse under the saddle. The like of him never was on the yeth for hard trottin’. He was _powerful_ hard. You’ve set and watched a saw-mill gate jerk up and down, havn’t you—up and down, up and down, like it was goin’ into fits? Well, _that was his motion adzactly_. Ses Jim, one day, ‘daddy I’m gwine to swop ‘old Hoss’ off, fust chance I git.’ Ses I, ‘Nobody’s fool enough to give you anything better’n an old cow for him.’ Ses he, ‘You’ll see.’ Well ’twarn’t long afore we ketcht up with a traveller—it was in the piney woods ’twixt Oakfuskee and Dudleyville—walkin’ and leadin’ his horse, which was Fiddler Bill. I’ll tell you, Squire,”—old Kit raised his voice and gesticulated vehemently—“_he was a horse then_—none o’ your little grays—as Homer Hinds ses—but a reg’lar horse, with head and legs like a deer, a body like a barrel, and put up like a jack-screw. He wos jist risin’ four year old, fat, _and hilt his head like the Queen of Sheby_! “So Jim bantered the stranger purty quick for a swap—but fust we found out he was walkin’ bekase he was afeard of his horse. He was a Norrud raised man and talked mighty proper—he said his horse was ‘very rested’—which you might see he had been layin’ by corn and fodder for some time—and had throwed him and disculpated his shoulder a’most! Then he axed us about the Injuns—this was jist afore the infernal devils began their devilment, and the thing had leaked out and was talked of, all over the country—and Jim seein’ he was _afeared of them_ too, let on like they was mighty thick and hostile in them woods. “‘Stranger,’ says he, ‘what would you do ef you was to see a red-skin peepin’ from behind that big pine yonder—and you afeared o’ your horse?’ “‘God only knows,’ ses the Yanky. “‘Well now I’ll tell you,’ ses Jim, ‘_thar’s_ a crittur under that saddle’—p’intin’ to ‘old Hoss’—‘that could take you outen the way like goose-grease! How’ll you trade?’