down to the branch with a camp-kettle to get water. He washed his face
and hands in the cold water, which revived him, and returning, built a
fire and hung the kettle over it, while he carefully picked and cleaned
one of the chickens for cooking. Then he plucked and cleaned the others,
and burned the feathers and entrails in the fire.

"Chicken feathers 's mighty tell-tale things," he said to himself. "I
once knowed a man that was finally landed in the penitentiary because he
didn't look out for chicken feathers. He'd bin stealin' hosses, and was
hidin' with them in the big swamp, where nobody would 've suspicioned he
was, if he hadn't stole chickens from the neighborhood to live on, and
left their feathers layin' around careless like, and some boys, who
thought the foxes was killin' the chickens, followed up the trail and
run onto him."

Then a bright idea occurred to him. He had a piece of board, which he
laid on the stones that formed the foundation of one end of the crib,
immediately under the flooring, and on this shelf he laid the other
chickens.

"I remember that Wash Jenkins that we arrested for counterfeitin' had
hid his pile o' pewter dollars in the underpinnin' of his cabin,
and we'd never found any stuff to convict him, except by the merest
accident. We hunted all through his cabin, below and in the loft, pulled
the clapboards off, and dug up every likely place in the yard, and just
about as we wuz givin' the whole thing up, somebody pulled a board
out o' the underpinnin' to lay in the bed o' his wagon, and the bogus
dollars run out. Wash made shoes for the State down at Jeffersonville
for some years on account of that man wantin' a piece o' board for his
wagon-bed."

But the astute Deacon had overlooked one thing in his calculations. The
crisp morning air was filled with the pungent smell of burning feathers
and flesh, and the fragrance of stewing chicken. It reached hungry men
in every direction, made their mouths water and their minds wonder where
it could come from.

First came a famished dog, sniffing and nosing around. His appearance
filled the Deacon with alarm. Here was danger to his hidden stock that
he had not thought of. He took his resolution at once. Decoying the cur
near him he fastened a sinewy hand upon his neck, cut his throat with
his jack-knife, and dragged the carcass some distance away from the
corn-crib.

"I'll git a mattock and shovel and bury it after awhile," he murmured
to