Also, their skins would fetch two
dollars apiece. 'Why,' said I, 'my dear wolves, you're worth one
hundred and thirty-six dollars.'

"'Don't you wish you may get it!' said they, sneering.

"'You're worth one hundred and thirty-six dollars,' I repeated, 'and
yet you want to sponge on a poor boy for a free supper! Shame!'"

"Did you say it out loud, grandpapa?"

"Well--no, Jenny. It's a thing I might have said, you know; but I
didn't exactly think of it at the time. I was feeling for my pistol.
Just as I tugged it out of its case at my waist, my knees, arms, and
all lost their hold, and down I fell."

"Grandpapa, _dear!_" Jenny nervously clutched him.

"I didn't fall far, pet. But the dust! Talk of sweeping floors! The
whole inside of the tree below me, borne down by my weight, had fallen
in chunks and dust. There I was, gasping for breath, and the hole
eight feet above my head. The lower entrance was of course blocked up
by the rotten wood."

"And they couldn't get at you?"

"No, Jimmy; but I was in a dreadful situation. At first I did not
fully realize it. Choking for air, my throat filled with particles of
dry rot, I tried to climb up again. But the hollow had become too
large. Nothing but a round shell of sound wood, a few inches thick,
was left around me. With feet, hands, elbows, and back, I strove to
ascend as before. But I could not. I was stuck fast!

"When I pushed with my feet I could only press my back against the
other side of the enlarged hole. I was horrified. Indeed, I thought
the tree would be my coffin. There I stood, breathing with difficulty
even when I breathed through my capuchin, which I took off of my
blanket overcoat. And there, I said to myself, I was doomed to stand
till my knees should give way and my head fall forward, and some day,
after many years, the old tree would blow down, and out would fall my
white and r-rattling bo-o-nes."

"Don't--_please_, grandpapa!" Jenny was trying to keep from crying.

"In spite of my vision of my own skull and cross-bones," went on
grandpapa, solemnly, "I was too young to despair wholly. I was at
first more annoyed than desperate. To be trapped so, to die in a hole
when I might have shot a couple of wolves and split the heads of one
or two more with my hatchet before they could have had boy for
supper--this thought made me very angry. And that brought me to
thinking of my hatchet.

"It was, I remembered, beneath my feet at the bottom of the lowe