of wilfulness, and her figure reminding me of the "Bear and Ragged Staff," as she sat erect holding a flower-stalk in her fore paws. This delinquency proved, no doubt, a solace to the dog, since the rival had then come to the end of her tether, and was banished forthwith to her own quarters for the remainder of the night.
We always did our best to keep her at home on moonlight nights, opossum hunting being then a favourite amusement of men and boys accompanied by dogs. These latter, when once trained to the sport, frequently follow it alone and on their own account, and will often molest the whole neighbourhood for hours together, by pertinaciously barking beneath a tree where some unlucky fugitive has taken refuge.
When our fruit was ripe we had yet other reasons for wishing Possie to content herself with her own spare room and carpet-bag. Opossums are said to scent apricots from a long distance, and their way of eating them is to taste a piece out of each apricot on a tree, but to finish none; and as they pursue the same method with all kinds of fruit, they quickly ruin the entire produce of a garden.
Possie had been our playfellow for about two years when we began to notice that her pouch contained a tenant. This was especially perceptible whenever she ran up and down a long bamboo rod that served as a staircase to her favourite hole in the roof; and the matter was placed beyond doubt, one day, by the appearance of a little hind leg, which she put back again in a great hurry. Some time afterwards, in the month of August, in rainy, gloomy weather, I found her very comfortably established behind a curtain with her young one sitting in front of
