of foreign, so
different from the boys whom we have always known. We were afraid at
first that godmother had made a great mistake in planning to take him on
a coon hunt. But it turned out that she was right, as she always is. He
told us afterward he had never enjoyed anything so much in all his life.

"It was just eight o'clock when we set out on the hunt last night. A big
hay-wagon drove up to the door with the party from The Beeches already
stowed away in it, sitting flat on the hay in the bottom. Mrs. Walton
was with them, and Miss Allison and Katie Mallard and her father, and
several others they had picked up on the way.

"While they were laughing and talking and everybody was being
introduced, Alec came driving up from the barn with another big wagon,
and we all piled into it except Lloyd and Rob, Joyce and Phil. They
were on horseback and kept alongside of us as outriders. The moon hadn't
come up, but the starlight was so bright that the road gleamed like a
white ribbon ahead of us, and we sang most of the way to the woods.

"Old Unc' Jefferson led the procession on his white mule, with three
lanky coon dogs following. They struck the trail before we reached our
stopping-place, and went dashing off into the woods. Unc' Jefferson
fairly rolled off his old mule, and threw the rope bridle over the first
fence-post, and went crashing through the underbrush after them. The
wagons kept on a few rods farther and landed us on the creek bank, up by
the black bridge.

"It seemed as if the whole itinerary of the hunt had been planned for
our especial benefit, for just as we reached the creek the moon began to
roll up through the trees like a great golden mill-wheel, and we could
see our way about in the woods. Evidently the coon's home was in some
hollow near our stopping-place, for instead of staying in the dense
beech woods, up where it would have been hard for us to climb, the first
dash of the dogs sent him scurrying toward the row of big sycamores that
overhang the creek.

"It whizzed by us so fast that at first we did not know what had passed
us till the dogs came tumbling after at breakneck speed. They were such
old hands at the game that they gave their quarry a bad time of it for
awhile, turning and doubling on his tracks till we were almost as
excited and bewildered as the poor coon. Little Mary Ware just stood and
wrung her hands, and once when the dogs were almost on him she teetered
up and down on her tipt