who oughter chop wood an' pull fodder but
ye, while my hand air sprained this way?" he demanded.

That hand had been sprained for many a long day, but the boy made no
reply; perhaps he knew its weight. He walked to the verge of the cliff,
and gazed down at the tops of the trees in the valley far, far below.

The expanse of foliage was surging in the wind like the waves of the
sea. From the unseen depths beneath there rose again the cry of the
pack, inexpressibly stirring, and replete with woodland suggestions. All
the echoes came out to meet it.

"I war promised ter go!" cried Jack bitterly.

"Waal," said his mother, from within the house, "'tain't no good nohow."

Her voice was calculated to throw oil upon the troubled waters,--low,
languid, and full of pacifying intonations. She was a tall, thin woman,
clad in a blue-checked homespun dress, and seated before a great
hand-loom, as a lady sits before a piano or an organ. The creak of the
treadle, and the thump, thump of the batten, punctuated, as it were, her
consolatory disquisition.

Her son looked at her in great depression of spirit as she threw the
shuttle back and forth with deft, practiced hands.

"Wild meat air a mighty savin'," she continued, with a housewifely
afterthought. "I ain't denyin' that."

Thump, thump, went the batten.

"But ye needn't pester the life out'n yerself 'kase ye ain't a-runnin'
the deer along o' them Saunders men. It 'pears like a powerful waste o'
time, when ye kin take yer gun down ter the river enny evenin' late,
jes' ez the deer air goin' ter drink, an' shoot ez big a buck ez ye hev
got the grit ter git enny other way. Ye can't do nothin' with a buck but
eat him, an' a-runnin' him all around the mounting don't make him no
tenderer, ter my mind. I don't see no sense in huntin' 'cept ter git
somethin' fitten ter eat."

This logic, enough to break a sportsman's heart, was not a panacea for
the tedium of the day, spent in the tame occupation of pulling fodder,
as the process of stripping the blades from the standing cornstalks is
called.

But when the shadows were growing long, Jack took his rifle and set out
for the profit and the pleasure of still-hunting. As he made his way
through the dense woods, the metallic tones of a cow-bell jangled on the
air,--melodious sound in the forest quiet, but it conjured up a scowl on
the face of the young mountaineer.

"Everything on this hyar mounting hev got the twistin's ter-day!" he