oes and squealed.

"All of a sudden the coon dodged to one side and disappeared. We thought
he had escaped, but a little later on we heard the dogs baying
frantically farther down the creek, and Rob shouted that they had treed
him, and for everybody to hurry up if they wanted to be in at the death.
So away we went, helter-skelter, in a wild race down the creek bank,
godmother, Papa Jack, Cousin Carl, and everybody. It was a rough
scramble, and as we pitched over rolling stones, and caught at bushes to
pull ourselves up, and swung down holding on to the saplings, I wondered
what Doctor Bradford would think of our tomboy ways.

"Nobody waited to be helped. It was every fellow for himself, we were in
such a hurry to get to the coon. Lloyd kept far in the lead, ahead of
everybody, and Joyce walked straight up a steep bank as if she had been
a fly. When we got to the tree where the dogs were howling and baying we
had to look a long time before we could see the coon. Then all we could
distinguish was the shine of its eyeballs, for it crouched so flat
against the limb that it seemed a part of the bark. It was away out on
the tip-end of one of the highest branches.

"The only way to get it was to shake it down, and to our surprise,
before we knew who had volunteered, we saw Doctor Bradford, in his
immaculate white flannels, throw off his coat and go shinning up the
tree like an acrobat in a circus. He had to shake and shake the limb
before he could dislodge the coon, but at last it let go, and the dogs
had it before it fairly touched the ground. We girls didn't wait to see
what they did with it, but stuck our fingers in our ears and tore back
to the wagons. Rob made fun of Lloyd when she said she didn't see why
they couldn't have coon hunts without coon killings, and that they ought
to have made the dogs let go. They had had the fun of catching it, and
they ought to be satisfied with that.

"Joyce whispered to me that the hunt had had one desirable result. It
had limbered up the Pilgrim Father so thoroughly, that he couldn't be
stiff and dignified again after his acrobatic feat. It really did make
a difference, for after that he was one of the jolliest men in the
party.

"As it was out of season and old Unc' Jefferson didn't care for the
coons, he called off the dogs after they had caught one, to show us what
the sport was like, and then he built us a grand camp-fire on the creek
bank, and we had what Mrs. Walton called th