ouldn't
crawl out. My legs were held in such a way that I couldn't move them,
and the more I pulled the more I hurt them. They were in pain already
with the heavy weight pressin' upon them, and I couldn't bear to move
them. No more could I turn myself. I war flat on my face, and couldn't
slew myself round any way, so as to get my hands at the log. I war
fairly catched in my own trap!

"It war jest about then I began to feel scared. Thar wan't no
settlement in the hul crik bottom but my mother's old shanty, an' that
were two miles higher up. It war as unlikely a thing as could happen
that anybody would be passing that way. And unless some one did I saw
no chance of gettin' clar o' the scrape I war in. I could do nothin'
for myself.

"I hollered as loud as I could, and that frightened the bar into his
cave again. I hollered for an hour, but I could hear no reply, and then
I war still a bit, and then I hollered again, an' kept this up pretty
much for the hul o' that blessed day.

"Thar wan't any answer but the echo o' my own shoutin', and the whoopin'
of the owls that flew about over my head, and appeared as if they war
mockin' me.

"I had no behopes of any relief comin' from home. My ole mother had
nobody but myself, and she wan't like to miss me, as I'd often stayed
out a huntin' for three or four days at a time. The only chance I had,
and I knew it too, war that some neighbour might be strayin' down the
crik, and you may guess what sort o' chance that war, when I tell you
thar wan't a neighbour livin' within less than five mile o' us. If no
one come by I knew I must lay there till I died o' hunger and rotted, or
the bar ate me up.

"Well, night come, and night went. 'Twar about the longest night this
child remembers. I lay all through it, a sufferin' the pain, and
listening to the screechin' owls. I could a screeched as loud as any of
them if that would a done any good. I heerd now and then the snuffin'
o' the bar, and I could see thar war two o' them. I could see thar big
black bodies movin' about like shadows, and they appeared to be gettin'
less afeerd o' me, as they come close at times, and risin' up on their
hind-quarters stood in front o' me like a couple o' black devils.

"I begun to get afeerd they would attack me, and so I guess they would
a-done, had not a circumstance happened that put them out o' the notion.

"It war jest grey day, when one o' them come so clost that I expected to