on, I continued: "Trapped in a tree! How could that be with
an old forester like you?"

"It dud be, howsomedever," was the quaint reply of my companion; "an'
not so very long agone, neyther. Ef ye'll sit down a bit, I'll tell ye
all, as I _kin_ tell it; for I hain't forgotten neery sarcumstance; an'
I'll lay odds, young feller, thet ef ever you be as badly skeeart,
you'll carry the recollection o' that skeer ter yer coffin.

"Ye see, kumrade, I war out arter deer jest as we are the day; only it
had got to be nigh sundown, i'deed, an' I hedn't emptied my rifle the
hul day. Fact is, I hedn't sot eye on a thing wuth a charge o' powder
an' lead. I war afut; an' it are a good six mile from this to my shanty.
I didn't like goin' home empty-handed, specially as I knowed we war
empty-housed; an' the ole 'ooman wanted somethin' to git us a pound or
two o' coffee an' sugar with. So I thort I shed stay all night i' the
wuds, trustin' to gettin' a shot at a stray buck or a turkey in the
early mornin'. I war jest in this spot; but it looked quite different
then. The hul place about hyar war kivered wi' the tallest o' cane, an'
so thick, a coon ked sca'ce worm his way through it; but sence then the
under-scrub's all been burnt out. So I tuk up my quarters for the night
under that 'ere big cyprus. The ground war dampish; for thar hed been a
spell o' rain. So I tuk out my bowie, an' cut me enough o' the green
cane to make a sort o' a shake-down. It war comf'table enough; an' in
the twinklin' o' a buck's tail, I war soun' asleep. I slep' like a
possum, till daybreak, an' then I war awoke by the worst noises as ever
rousted a feller out o' his slumber. I heerd a skreekin' an' screamin'
an' screevin', as ef all the saws in Massissippi wor bein' sharped
'ithin twenty yards o' my ear. It all kim from overhead,--from out the
top o' the cyprus; an' it war the callin' o' the baldy eagles; it wa'n't
the fust time I had listened to them hyar. 'That's a neest,' sez I to
myself; 'an' young 'uns, too. That's why the birds is makin' sech a
rumpis.' Not that I cared much about a eagle's nest, nor the birds
neyther. But jest then I remembered my ole 'ooman had told me that there
war a rich Englishman at the tavern in Grand Gulf who offered no eend o'
money for a brace o' young baldy eagles.

"So in coorse I clomb the tree. 'T warn't so easy as you may s'pose.
Thar war forty feet o' the stem 'ithout a branch, an' so smooth thet a
catamount kedn't 'a'