ll the
good chances after a while;" and he looked round indulgently at the
chubby faces of his boys, who fed the fire, and rejoiced in being
promoted to the society of their elders on equal terms. "Ain't it time
we heard from the dog?" And they all listened, while the fire snapped
and the sap whistled in some green sticks.

"I hear him," said John Henry suddenly; and faint and far away there
came the sound of a desperate bark. There is a bark that means attack,
and there is a bark that means only foolish excitement.

"They ain't far off!" said Isaac. "My gracious, he's right after him!
I don't know's I expected that poor-looking dog to be so smart. You
can't tell by their looks. Quick as he scented the game up here in the
rocks, off he put. Perhaps it ain't any matter if they ain't
stump-tailed, long's they 're yaller dogs. He did n't look heavy
enough to me. I tell you, he means business. Hear that bark!"

"They all bark alike after a coon." John York was as excited as
anybody. "Git the guns laid out to hand, boys; I told you we 'd ought
to follow!" he commanded. "If it's the old fellow that belongs here,
he may put in any minute." But there was again a long silence and
state of suspense; the chase had turned another way. There were faint
distant yaps. The fire burned low and fell together with a shower of
sparks. The smaller boys began to grow chilly and sleepy, when there
was a thud and rustle and snapping of twigs close at hand, then the
gasp of a breathless dog. Two dim shapes rushed by; a shower of bark
fell, and a dog began to sing at the foot of the great twisted pine not
fifty feet away.

"Hooray for Tiger!" yelled the boys; but the dog's voice filled all the
woods. It might have echoed to the mountain-tops. There was the old
coon; they could all see him half-way up the tree, flat to the great
limb. They heaped the fire with dry branches till it flared high. Now
they lost him in a shadow as he twisted about the tree. John York
fired, and Isaac Brown fired, and the boys took a turn at the guns,
while John Henry started to climb a neighboring oak; but at last it was
Isaac who brought the coon to ground with a lucky shot, and the dog
stopped his deafening bark and frantic leaping in the underbrush, and
after an astonishing moment of silence crept out, a proud victor, to
his prouder master's feet.

"Goodness alive, who 's this? Good for you, old handsome! Why, I 'll
be hanged if it ai