“I can’t borrow coats,” added Linkum, soliloquizing, “because I don’t like cuffs at the elbows. I can’t borrow pants, because it isn’t the fashion to wear knee-breeches, and all my stockings are socks. I can’t hide when anybody owes me a lambasting. You can see me a mile. When I sit by the fire, I can’t get near enough to warm my body, without burning my knees; and in a stage-coach, there’s no room between the benches, and the way you get the cramp—don’t mention it.” “I don’t know nothing about all these things; but to imagine I was a tall chap—” “Don’t try; you’ll hurt yourself, for it’s a great stretch of imagination for a little feller to do that.” After which amicable colloquy, nothing more was heard of them, except that, before retiring to rest, they chuckled over the idea that the coming spring would sweat the ice to death for the annoyance it had caused them. But ever while they live, will they remember “the night of hysts.” XXI. A SWIM FOR A DEER. “Yes, Capting, the bar war _lower_, I tell _you_—why, bless your soul, honey, they war not only powerful thick, but some on ’em war as big as common-sized horses, I _do_ reckon; cause why, nobody ever had hunted ’em, you see. In the winter time the overflow, and in the summer time the lakes and snakes, bayous and alligators, musketoes and gallinippers, buffalo-gnats and sand-flies, with a small sprinkle of the agur and a _perfect cord_ of congestive, prevented the Ingins from gwine through the country! Oh no; the red skins would rather hunt the fat turkey and deer in the Azoo hills and pine lands t’other side of the Pearl river, to killin’ fat bar on the Creek or Sunflower.” “Well, Jim, I think they were right; you must then have been among the first hunters in the country.” “Yes, I _do_ reckon when I first went into that country, from the Azoo Hills to the Mississippi, there never had been but _mighty few_ hunters. Why thar ar places thar now whar the deer ar tame as sheep, and whar the bar don’t care for _nobody_! Fact! ask Chunkey!” “That is very remarkable; what is the cause?” “’Cause they’ve never been hunted; no, Sir: never hearn the crack of a rifle nor the yelp of a dog; why thar ar more nor a hundred lakes and brakes in them diggins, that hain’t never been pressed by no mortal ’ceptin’ varmints. You know more nor half the country is overflowed in the winter, and t’other half, which is a darned sight the biggest, is covered with cane, palmetto and other fixins;—why it stands to reason, and in course no man ever _had_ hunted ’em.—Why, Sir, when I first went to the Creek—” “Let the Creek run, Jim; tell us about the bear!”