e passed a very dense thicket, he saw the boughs swaying to
and fro, where a deer was apparently browsing. Very cautiously he crept
within rifle-shot, occasionally catching a glimpse, through the thick
foliage, of the ear of the animal,--as he supposed.

Taking deliberate aim he fired, and immediately heard a loud outcry.
Rushing to the spot, he found that he had shot a neighbor, who was
there gathering grapes. The ball passed through his side, inflicting a
very serious though not a fatal wound, as it chanced not to strike any
vital part. The wounded man was carried home; and the rude surgery
which was practised upon him was to insert a silk handkerchief with a
ramrod in at the bullet-hole, and draw it through his body. He
recovered from the wound.

Such a man as John Crockett forms no local attachments, and never
remains long in one place. Probably some one came to his region and
offered him a few dollars for his improvements. He abandoned his cabin,
with its growing neighborhood, and packing his few household goods upon
one or two horses, pushed back fifty miles farther southwest, into the
trackless wilderness. Here he found, about ten miles above the present
site of Greenville, a fertile and beautiful region. Upon the banks of a
little brook, which furnished him with an abundant supply of pure
water, he reared another shanty, and took possession of another four
hundred acres of forest land. Some of his boys were now old enough to
furnish efficient help in the field and in the chase.

How long John Crockett remained here we know not. Neither do we know
what induced him to make another move. But we soon find him pushing
still farther back into the wilderness, with his hapless family of sons
and daughters, dooming them, in all their ignorance, to the society
only of bears and wolves. He now established himself upon a
considerable stream, unknown to geography, called Cue Creek.

David Crockett was now about eight years old. During these years
emigration had been rapidly flowing from the Atlantic States into this
vast and beautiful valley south of the Ohio. With the increasing
emigration came an increasing demand for the comforts of civilization.
Framed houses began to rise here and there, and lumber, in its various
forms, was needed.

John Crockett, with another man by the name of Thomas Galbraith,
undertook to build a mill upon Cove Creek. They had nearly completed
it, having expended all their slender means in its