rdening; but a county show
down at the Settlement had converted him, and now his cabbage patch
was the chief object of his solicitude. He had proud dreams of prizes
to be won at the next show--now not three weeks ahead.

It was his habit, whenever he harnessed up the team for a drive into
the Settlement, to turn his head the last thing before leaving and
cast a long, gratified look down over the cabbage patch, its cool,
clear green standing out sharply against the yellow-brown of the
surrounding fields. On this particular morning he did not turn for
that look till he had jumped into the wagon and gathered up the reins.
Then, as he gazed, a wave of indignation passed over his good-natured
face.

There, in the middle of the precious cabbages, biting with a sort of
dainty eagerness at first one and then another, and wantonly tearing
open the crisp heads with impatient strokes of his knife-edged fore
hoofs, was a tall wide-antlered buck.

Sam Coxen dropped the reins, sprang from the wagon, and rushed to the
bars which led from the yard to the back field; and the horses--for
the sake of his dignity he always drove the pair when he went into the
Settlement--fell to cropping the short, fine grass that grew behind
the well. In spite of having grown up in the backwoods, Sam was
lacking in backwoods lore. He was no hunter, and he cared as little as
he knew, about the wild kindreds of the forest. He had a vague,
general idea that all deer were "skeery critters"; and if any one had
told him that the buck, in mating season, was not unlikely to develop
a fine militant spirit, he would have laughed with scorn.

Climbing upon the bars, he yelled furiously at the marauder,
expecting to see him vanish like a red streak. But the buck merely
raised his beautiful head and stared in mild surprise at the strange,
noisy figure on the fence. Then he coolly slashed open another plump
cabbage, and nibbled at the firm white heart.

Very angry, Coxen yelled again with all the power of healthy lungs,
and waved his arms wildly over his head. But the vaunted authority of
the human voice seemed in some inexplicable way to miss a connexion
with the buck's consciousness. The waving of those angry arms,
however, made an impression upon him. He appeared to take it as a
challenge, for he shook his beautiful antlers and stamped his forefeet
defiantly--and shattered yet another precious cabbage.

Wrath struggled with astonishment in Sam Coxen's primiti