ugh there was little need of stealth, they crept, Indian file,
around the branchy edges of the fields, through the wet,
sweet-smelling thickets. The hunter's fever was upon them, fierce and
furtive. They came to the corn-field--to find that the raccoons had
paid their visit, made their meal, and got away at the first faint
signal of the approach of danger. With an outburst of excited
yelpings, the dogs took up the hot trail, and the hunters made
straight through the woods for the sycamore-tree.

It was a party of five. With the young farmer, the hired boy, the
harebrained Irish setter, and the wise little black and white mongrel,
came also the young schoolmaster of the settlement, who boarded at the
farm. A year out of college, and more engrossed in the study of the
wild creatures than ever he had been in his books, he had joined the
hunt less from sympathy than from curiosity. He had outgrown his
boyhood's zeal for killing things, and he had a distinct partiality
for raccoons; but he had never taken part in a 'coon hunt, and it was
his way to go thoroughly into whatever he undertook. He carried a
little .22 Winchester repeater, which he had brought with him from
college, and had employed, hitherto, on nothing more sentient than
empty bottles or old tomato-cans.

Now it chanced that not all the raccoon family had made their escape
to the deep hole in the sycamore. The old male, who was rather
solitary and moody in his habits at this season, had followed the
flight of the clan for only a short distance; and suddenly, to their
doubtful joy and complete surprise, the two dogs, who were far ahead
of the hunters, overtook him. After a moment's wise hesitation, the
black and white mongrel joined battle, while the setter contributed a
great deal of noisy encouragement. By the time the hunters came up the
mongrel had drawn off, bleeding and badly worsted; and the angry
raccoon, backed up against a tree, glared at the newcomers with fierce
eyes and wide-open mouth, as if minded to rush upon them.

The odds, however, were much too great for even so dauntless a soul as
his; and when the enemy were within some ten or twelve paces, he
turned and ran up the tree. In the first fork he crouched, almost
hidden, and peered down with one watchful eye.

The young farmer was armed with an old, muzzle-loading,
single-barrelled duck-gun. He raised it to his shoulder and took aim
at the one bright eye gleaming from behind the branch. Then