all the hunters; he is stronger than he seems;—besides, he has his rifle."
"That for his rifle!" cried Billy; "he'd no more hurt me with his rifle than he'd fly. He is a harmless creater, and I must say that I think he has as good a right to kill deer as any man on the patent. It's his main support, and this is a free country, where a man is privileged to follow any calling he likes."
"According to that doctrine," said Jotham, "any body may shoot a deer."
"This is the man's calling, I tell you," returned Kirby, "and the law was never made for such as him."
"The law was made for all," observed Hiram, who began to think that the danger was likely to fall to his own share, notwithstanding his management; "and the law is particular in noticing parjury."
"See here, Squire Doolittle," said the reckless wood-chopper, "I don't kear the valie of a beetlering for you and your parjury too. But as I have come so far, I'll go down and have a talk with the old man, and maybe we'll fry a steak of the deer together."
"Well, if you can get in peaceably, so much the better," said the magistrate. "To my notion, strife is very unpopular; I prefar, at all times, clever conduct to an ugly temper."
As the whole party moved at a great pace, they soon reached the hut, where Hiram thought it prudent to halt on the outside of the top of the fallen pine, which formed a chevaux-de-frize, to defend the approach to the fortress, on the side next to the village. The delay was but little relished by Kirby, who clapped his hands to his mouth, and gave a loud halloo, that brought the dogs out of their kennel, and, almost at the same
