its sharp, bright edge. And then the brown and
tortoise-shell cat belonging to the "old woman" will partake of the
lustre; and the old woman herself--a little, active, bustling body,
will be seated in one corner of the fire-place, after having swept
clean the hearth; and "Sport" will have coiled his long body on a
bear-skin near her. Lastly, the settler himself will be sitting upon a
stool opposite "Betsey," with his elbows on his knees, smoking a pipe
as black as his face at the "spring logging." But stop--where was I?
Oh, in the woods!"

"Look! look!" cries Susan, the owner of the gray orbs, with an accent
of delight, "see that beautiful black squirrel eating!"

We all looked, and sure enough, there is the little object in a nook
of warm bronze light, with his paws to his whiskered face, cracking
nuts, one after another, as fast as possible. But he stops, with his
paws still uplifted, looks askance for a moment, and away he shoots
then through the "brush-fence" at our side like a dart.

We soon find the tree whence he gathered his fruit. It is a noble
hickory, with here and there a brown leaf clinging to its boughs. A
stone or two brings the globes that hold the nuts to the earth. They
have commenced cracking, and with a little exertion we uncover the
snow-white balls. We are now all determined to rob the tree. It has no
business to be displaying its round wealth so temptingly. And, beside,
it will, if let alone, most probably entice boys from the little black
school-house out yonder to "play truant." So it is unanimously voted
that Benning, who is light and active, should climb the tree. Up he
goes, like one of those little striped woodpeckers that are so often
seen in the woods tapping up the trees, and immediately his hands and
feet make the branches dance, whilst the green globes drop like great
hail-stones on the earth. We then commence stripping the nuts from
their covers, and soon the base of the tree is covered with them. We
then stow the ivories away in our bags, and start for new havoc.

We come now to the brush-fence. It is a perfect _chevau-de-frize_. It
looks at us with a sort of defying, bristling air, as if it said as
Wilson, the horse-jockey, says when some one endeavors to hoodwink him
in a bargain, "You can't come it!"

We wont try here, but a little lower down there is a gap made by John
Huff's cow, that uses her horns so adroitly in the attack of a fence,
no matter how difficult, that I verily