and was out of sight in an instant. "Why in thunder didn't you fire, Sam, as I told you?" "Fire, massa? Gully mighty, massa, I didn't tink 'twas any use! He jump so almighty high, I was done gone sure he'd break his back falling, massa!" was the trembling darkey's quick-witted reply.
I once knew a man out in Illinois named Wheeler. He had been engaged in farming on Fox River for years and never fired a gun. But one winter when a light snow covered the ground, he heard the boys talking so much about the fun they were having at deer-hunting of that his ambition became excited, and he determined to borrow a gun and start out himself. He did so. That night he came back with a magnificent buck, shot square in the middle of the forehead. Wheeler said little about his achievement, but got the credit of being a crack shot, which he enjoyed for years. But on an evil day he visited the village of St. Charles, on the occasion of the visit of a circus to the place, and getting unusually full of ginger-pop and such mild stimulants, in an unguarded moment let out the secret and blasted that glorious reputation in an instant. He had seen a doe drinking out of a creek at the foot of a bluff some twenty feet in height, and in the wild excitement of the moment got the rifle to his shoulder, shut his eyes, set his teeth like a child in a fit, and pulled trigger. To his utter astonishment he saw the doe bound away untouched, and at the same instant a glorious buck pitched headlong from the top of the bluff into the creek, shot dead as a door nail by a bullet through the head. The buck had
