e brush close
by. Not knowing what it might prove to be, he was in no hurry to jump
over that way.

"What did you shoot at, Nick?" he demanded, as the excited boy
scrambled awkwardly to his feet, and appeared anxious to renew the
engagement; at the same time Jack made sure to lay hold on the other's
gun, lest he open fire recklessly.

"I d--d--don't know for sure," stammered Nick; "but it looked awfully
like a tiger."

"What?" exclaimed Jack, astonished. "Why, don't you know there isn't
such an animal in North America?"

"Might have been a striped skunk, Jack?" suggested Josh, who had poked
his head out from the cabin of the _Comfort_.

"Or a zebra escaped from a menagerie," Herb remarked.

"All right, have all the fun you want, fellows," said Nick, doggedly;
"but all the same, whatever it was, I got it."

"That's just what he did, boys, I reckon," Jack declared; "because you
can hear it kicking its last over yonder in the bushes. Here, where's
that lantern of ours, Jimmy? I let you have it, remember? Light up,
and show me the way in there."

Jimmy quickly applied a match to the wick, and as the light flared up,
he swung the lantern in his hand.

"Who's afraid?" he said, boldly, as he started toward the spot where
silence now reigned. "Come along after me, Jack, darlint; and please
remimber that if the beast springs at me, I depind on you to knock
spots out of him. Keep back, the rest of ye, now, till we solve the
puzzle."

Jack kept his gun in readiness, for there could be no telling what lay
beyond that fringe of bushes.

"I do be seein' somethin' there on the ground, Jack. Looky yonder,
honey, an' sure ye can't miss the same, by the token," Jimmy presently
said, in a low, strained voice, as he pointed a trembling finger ahead.

"Yes, I see something," Jack admitted. "Go on, Jimmy, take a few more
steps. No matter what a ferocious monster it may prove to be, I rather
guess Nick nailed it with that charge of shot at close range."

They kept on advancing, and the nearer they drew the bolder Jimmy
seemed to grow, until presently both boys stood over the victim of
Nick's fire.

Then they broke out into a shout that made the weird echoes leap out of
the depths of Dismal Swamp.

"Tare and ounds!" burst forth Jimmy, "if 'tisn't a shoat afther all he
killed."

"Say rather a full grown razorback pig," laughed Jack, as he noted the
sharp snout of the rooter, and its slab sides.

Jimmy immediate