We used to start out just as the moon, climbing over the woods, fell soft across the bare fields. The old dog would be some distance ahead, her nose to the ground, sometimes picking up a trail in the first cornfield, or again not until we reached the woods, or again leading us for miles along the creek meadows among the scattered persimmon trees, before striking a fresh scent. Wherever the trail started it usually led away for the woods, for some hollow stump or tree, where the ’possum made his nest. Once in a while I have overtaken the fat fellow in an open field or atop a fence, or have even caught him in a hencoop; but usually, if hunting at night, it has been a long, and not always an easy, chase, for a ’possum, in spite of his fat and his fossil ancestors, is not stupid. Or else he is so slow-witted that there is no telling, by man or dog, which way he will go, or what he may do next. A rabbit, or a deer, or a coon, when you are on their trail, will do certain things. You can count upon them with great certainty. But a ’possum never seems to do anything twice alike; he has no traveled paths, no regular tricks, no set habits. He knows the road home, but it is always a different road--a meandering, roundabout, zigzag, criss-cross, up-and-down (up-the-trees-and-down) road, we-won’t-get-home-till-morning road, that takes in all the way stations, from the tops of tall persimmon trees to the bottoms of all the deep, dark holes that need looking into, along the route. Peculiar!--So, at least, a dog with an orderly mind and well-regulated habits thinks, anyhow. For a ’possum trail will give a good rabbit dog the blues; he hasn’t the patience for it. Only a slow rheumatic old hound will stick to a ’possum trail with the endurance necessary to carry it to its end--in a hollow log, or a hollow stump, or under a shock of corn or a rail-pile. Once the trail actually led me, after much trouble, into a hen-house and into a stove in the hen-house, where, upon the grate, I found three ’possums in their nest! It is a peculiar sport, this ’possum-hunting; yet it is mildly exciting; and when you get your ’possum by the tail, he smiles at you--grins, I ought to say--and has a fit. To go hunting for a creature that smiles at you in a dreadful manner when you capture him, that flops down in a dead faint or has a fit when you take him up by the tail, that shows the spunk and fight of a boiled cabbage--to go hunting for such a beast must be exciting, as exciting as going to the store for a quart of beans.