ther removed to Mississippi, purchased the plantation
adjoining General Gordon's, and began the cultivation of cotton.

Mr. Brigham was said to be the richest man in that county, and Lester
had more fine things than all the rest of the boys about there put
together. He took particular pride in his splendid hunting and
fishing outfit, and it was coveted by almost every boy who had seen
it. He had four guns--all breech-loaders; a beautiful little
fowling-piece for such small game as quails and snipes; a larger one
for ducks and geese; a light squirrel rifle, something like the one
Clarence Gordon owned; and a heavier weapon, which he called his deer
gun, and which carried a ball as large as the end of one's thumb. He
had two jointed fish-poles--one a light, split bamboo, such as is
used in fly-fishing, and the other a stout lancewood, for such heavy
fish as black bass and pike.

If there was any faith to be put in the stories he told, Lester was a
hunter and fisherman who had few equals. Before he came to the South,
it was his custom, he said, to spend a portion of every winter in the
woods in the northern part of Michigan, and many a deer and bear had
fallen to his rifle there. He could catch trout and black bass where
other fellows would not think of looking for them, and as for quails,
it was no trouble at all for him to make a double shot and bag both
the birds every time. There were boys in the neighborhood who doubted
this. Game of all kinds was abundant, and Lester was given every
opportunity to exhibit the skill of which he boasted so loudly, but
he was never in the humor to do it. He seldom went hunting, and when
he did he always went alone, and no one ever knew how much game he
brought home.

"Your name is Evans, isn't it?" demanded Lester.

David replied that it was.

"Are you the fellow who intends to trap fifty dozen quail in this
county, and send them up North?"

"I am," answered David.

"Well, I just rode down here on purpose to tell you that such work as
that will not be allowed."

"Who will not allow it?"

"I will not, for one, and my father for another."

"What have you to say about it?" asked David, who did not like the
insolent tone assumed by the young horseman. "Do the birds belong to
you?"

"They are as much mine as they are yours, and if you have a right to
trap them and ship them off, I have a right to say that you shan't do
it."

"Why not? What harm will it do?"

"It will do ju