assachusetts."

"How'd ye come to go there, Jed?" This was a question never to be omitted.

"Oh, I had a great sight of money to take to some folks that lived there.
The captain of our ship had died at sea, and he give me nine thousand five
hundred and seventy-two English gold guineas, to take to his brother and
sister."

Here he always stared around at the company, and accepted credulously the
counterfeit coin of grotesquely exaggerated amazement which was given him.

"Wa'al, sir, I done it. I give the gold to them as it belonged to, and I
was to leave town on the noon stagecoach. I was stayin' in the captain's
brother's house. It was spang up against the woods, on the edge of town;
and, I tell ye, woods _was_ woods in them days.

"The mornin' I was to leave I was up early, lookin' out of my window, when
what should I see with these mortial eyes but a gre't bull moose, as big
as two yoke o' oxen, comin' along toward the house. He sort o' staggered
along, and then give a gre't sigh I could hear from my room--I was on the
ground floor--fell down on his knees, and laid his head on the ground 's
if he was too beat out to go another step. Wa'al, sir, I never waited not
long enough even to fetch a holler to wake the folks I just dove out o'
the window, and made for him as fast as I could lick in. As I went by the
wood-pile, I grabbed up a big stick of wood----"

"What kind of wood?" everybody asked in chorus.

"'Twas a big stick of birch-wood, with the white bark on it as clean as
writin'-paper. I grabbed that up for a club--'twas the only thing in
sight--and when I got to the moose I hit him a clip on the side of the
head as hard as I could lay on. He didn't so much as open an eye, but I
saw he was still breathing and I climbed up on his back so's to get a good
whack at the top of his head. And then, sir, by Jupiter! he riz right up
like a earthquake under me, and started off at forty miles an hour. He
throwed his head back as he run, and ketched me right between his horns,
like a nut in a nutcracker. I couldn't have got out of them horns--no,
sir, a charge of powder couldn't scarcely have loosened me."

There was another pause at this place for the outcries of astonishment and
marvel which were never lacking. Then Jed went on, mumbling his toothless
gums in delight over his importance.

"Wa'al, sir, I dassent tell ye how long we careered around them woods and
pastures, for, after a while, he got so plumb crazy that