When _we_ knew him he was an old man—the blasts of seventy winters had silvered o’er his head, and taken the elasticity from his limbs; yet in the whole of his life was Mike never worsted, except upon one occasion. To use his own language, he never “gin in,” used up, to anything that travelled on two legs or four, but once. “That _once_ we want,” said Bill Slasher, as some dozen of us sat in the bar-room of the only tavern in the “settlement.” “Gin it to us now, Mike; you’ve promised long enough, and you’re old now, and needn’t care,” continued Bill. “Right, right, Bill,” said Mike; “but we’ll open with a _licker_ all around fust, it’ll kind o’ save my feelin’s I reckon.” “Thar, that’s good. Better than t’other barrel, if anything.” “Well, boys,” commenced Mike, “you may talk o’ your scrimmages, tight places and sich like, and subtract ’em altogether in one all-mighty big ’un, and they hain’t no more to be compared to the one I war in, than a dead kitten to an old she-bar, I’ve fout all kinds of varmints, from a Ingun down to a rattlesnake, and never was willin’ to quit fust, but this once, and t’was with a bull! “You see, boys, it was an awful hot day in August, and I war near runnin’ off into pure _ile_, when I war thinkin’ that a _dip_ in the creek mout save me. Well, thar was a mighty nice place in old Deacon Smith’s medder for that partic’lar bizziness. So I went down among the bushes to unharness. I jest hauled the old red shirt over my head, and war thinkin’ how scrumptious a feller of my size would feel a wallerin’ round in that ar water, and was jest ’bout goin’ in, when I seed the old Deacon’s bull a makin a b-line to whar I stood. “I know’d the old cuss, for he’d skar’d more people than all the parsons in the ‘settlement,’ and cum mighty near killin’ a few. Think’s I, Mike, you’re in rather a tight place. Get your fixin’s on, for he’ll be drivin’ them big horns o’ his in yer bowels afore that time. Well, you’ll hev to try the old varmint naked, I reck’n. “The bull war on one side o’ the creek, and I on t’other, and the way he made the ‘sile’ fly for a while, as if he war diggin’ my grave, war distressin’! “‘Come on, ye bellerin’ old heathen,’ said I, ‘and don’t be a standin’ there; for, as the old Deacon says o’ the devil, yer not comely to look on.’ “This kind o’ reached his understandin’, and made him more wishious; for he hoofed a little like, and made a drive. And as I don’t like to stand in anybody’s way, I gin him plenty sea-room. So he kind o’ passed by me, and cum out on t’other side; and as the captain o’ the mud-swamp ranger’s would say: ‘’bout face for another charger.’