Don and Bert Gordon and the “Circus-Hosses.”

BOY TRAPPER SERIES.

THE
BURIED TREASURE;
OR,
OLD JORDAN’S “HAUNT.”

By HARRY CASTLEMON,

AUTHOR OF “THE FRANK NELSON SERIES,” “THE SPORTSMAN’S CLUB SERIES,” “GUNBOAT SERIES,” &C.

PHILADELPHIA
HENRY T. COATES & CO.

FAMOUS CASTLEMON BOOKS.

Other Volumes in Preparation.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, by
PORTER & COATES,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

CONTENTS.

THE
BURIED TREASURE.

CHAPTER I.
GODFREY EVANS.

“WAL, of all the dinners that ever a white man sot down to, this yere is the beat!”

The speaker was Godfrey Evans—a tall, raw-boned man, dressed in a tattered, brown jean suit. He was barefooted, his toil-hardened hands and weather-beaten face were sadly soiled and begrimed, and his hair and whiskers looked as though they had never been made acquainted with a comb. As he spoke he drew an empty nail-keg from its corner, placed a board over the top of it, and seating himself, ran his eye over the slender stock of viands his wife had just placed on the table.

The man’s appearance was in strict keeping with his surroundings. The cabin in which he lived and everything it contained told of the most abject poverty. The building, which was made of rough, unhewn logs, could boast of but one room and a loft, to which access was gained by a ladder fastened against the wall. It had no floor and no windows, all the light being admitted through a dilapidated door, which every gust of wind threatened to shake from its hinges, and the warmth being supplied by an immense fire-place with a stick chimney, which occupied nearly the whole of one end of the cabin. There were no chairs to be seen—the places of these useful articles being supplied by empty nail-kegs and blocks of wood; and neither were there any beds—a miserable “shake-down” in one corner being the best in this line that the cabin could afford. Everything looked as if it were about to fall to pieces. Even the rough board table on which the dinner was placed would have tumbled over, had it not been propped up against the wall.

Godfrey Evans had seen better days. He had once been comparatively well off in the world; but he had lost all his property through no fault of his own, and the loss so disheartened him that he would make no effort to accumulate more. At his time of life it was too late to begin again with empty hands, he said; so he accepted the situation, but with a very bad grace, and spent the most of his time in roaming about the woods with his gun on his shoulder, and the rest in bemoaning his altered circumstances, and denouncing those of his neighbors who were more fortunate than himself.

Godfrey’s family consisted of a wife and two sons—the latter aged respectively seventeen and fifteen years. His wife was a meek-faced woman who had seen a world of care and trouble, and who, while submitting patiently to her hard lot, hoped for better things, and placed unbounded confidence in her youngest son, David, who was animated by an energetic, manly spirit, which contrasted strangely with his father’s indolence and indifference. Godfrey seemed content to pass the remainder of his days in that hovel, destitute of all the comforts, and even suffering for many of the necessaries of life; but David was not. He had high aspirations, had formed plans, and, better than that, he had perseverance and pluck enough to carry them out. Of him and his brother, Daniel, we shall have more to say as our story progresses. It will be enough, now, to tell the reader that if they had been utter strangers, they could not have been more unlike each other. David was of a lively, cheerful disposition, and his entry into the comfortless hovel he called home, was like a ray of sunshine bursting through a storm cloud. Daniel, on the other hand, was like his father, morose and sullen, and when he came home from the woods or the steamboat landing, where he spent the most of his time, it seemed as if a thunder cloud had suddenly settled down over the cabin.

Having drawn his nail-keg up to the table, Godfrey thrust his hand into his pocket, pulled out his jack-knife, and picking up the fork that lay beside his broken plate, held the two close together and looked at them intently for several minutes. The fork was not such a fork as the most of us use at our meals. It was simply a piece of cane sharpened at one end; and perhaps this story will fall into the hands of some who can remember, or who have heard it said, that there was a time, not so very long ago, when a good many families in the South, who had all their lives been accustomed to something better, had their choice between employing their fingers at table, or using such an implement as this we have just described.

“Look at this yere, now,” said Godfrey, “jest look at it, I say, the hul on yer, an’ then ax yerselves if it aint a purty pass fur a man to come to, who had a nice house, a fine plantation and four niggers of his own, only twelve short years ago! Eh?”

“We can’t help it, father,” said Mrs. Evans, who knew that her angry husband expected her to say something. “We had comforts once, and we might have them now if—if——”

“Yes, in course we might, if them Yanks had stayed to hum, whar they belonged,” Godfrey almost shouted. “We didn’t do nothin’ to them that they should come down here an’ burn our houses an’ cotton gins, an’ steal our things, did we?”

“The Federals didn’t do it all, father,” said David. “They burned our buildings, just as they burned the buildings of almost every man who was in the rebel army; but we should have had enough left to get along with, if Redburn’s guerillas had left us alone. They didn’t leave us a bed to sleep on!”

“That’s what makes me so pizen savage agin everybody,” exclaimed Godfrey, pounding with the handle of his knife on the table. “The men what wore the same colored jacket as I did, came here and tuk what the Yanks left us. Why didn’t they go up to Gordon’s an’ clean them out too? Kase Gordon was a gen’ral, that’s why. That fuss was a rich man’s war, an’ a poor man’s fight, that’s jest what that fuss was; an’ everybody can see it now that it is done past. Men like me had to stay in the ranks an’ carry a musket, an’ starve an’ freeze in the trenches—that’s what we had to do; while rich planters, like Gordon, lived high in their tents, rode their fine hosses, stole the sanitary goods the Yanks sent to their fellers in Richmond, an’ thought they was a fightin’ for the ’federacy.”

“Why, father, General Gordon was wounded no less than three times,” said David.

“S’pose he was,” replied Godfrey.

“An’ while he was fighting the Feds in front of Richmond, some more of them came here and burned down his splendid house, that ours wouldn’t have made a woodshed to, and stole everything his family had.”

“No, they didn’t do nothing of the kind,” answered his father, almost savagely. “They burned his house, I know, an’ sarved him right, too. I’m glad of it; but as fur stealin’ everything the Gordons had, that ain’t so. No ’taint. The gen’ral’s got heaps an’ stacks of money now.”

“I don’t believe it,” said David, bluntly.

“If you want me to lay that cowhide over yer shoulders right peart, you jest conspute me that ar way onct more,” said Godfrey, setting down his cup of buttermilk. “Whar did them speckled ponies come from that Don and Bert ride around the country, I’d like to know, if the Gordons hain’t got no money? I was up thar the other day when it rained so hard, an’ the gen’ral, bein’ mighty perlite, axed me would I come in an set till the storm was over. Wal, I went, an’ what did I see? The fust thing I laid my eyes onto was a pianner that them gals thumps on when they had oughter be workin’ in the kitchen. They was a settin’ the table fur dinner, too; an’ didn’t I see silver forks thar, an’ white-handled knives, an’ chiny, an’ all them things that would jest set me onto my feet agin if I had the money they cost? I did, I bet ye. Hain’t got no money, hey, the Gordons hain’t? I know better. They have, an’ that’s what makes me so pizen savage. How have they got any more right to have to nor I have? We both fit the Yanks, an’ I made a poor man of myself by it, while the gen’ral is jest as well off as he ever was. Things ain’t fixed right in this yere ’arth, no how!”

“Thar they come now,” said Dan, who sat where he could look out of the door and up the road that led toward General Gordon’s plantation. “Thar they come, ridin’ them circus-hosses, and talkin’ an’ laughin’ as though they was the happiest fellers in the world. Everybody is happy ’ceptin’ us. If I had what one of them ponies is wuth, I wouldn’t have to wear no sich clothes as these yere,” added Dan, raising his arm and pulling his sleeve around so that he could see the gaping rent in the elbow. “If I could run one of them hosses off an’ sell it without being ketched, I’d do it to-night!”

“O, Daniel, don’t talk so,” said his mother quickly.

“An’ why not, I’d like to know?” retorted Dan. “Has them fellers any right to go a gollopin’ about the country on horseback, while I’ve got to hoof it all the while, an’ go barefoot too?”

“No, they hain’t,” said Godfrey. “They’ve got jest as much right to hoof it as any of us; an’ we’ve got the same right to ride on horseback that they has. We could do it onct, an’ we’ll do it agin! yes, we will, fur times is goin’ to change with us, an’ purty soon too. Now, don’t forget what I’m tellin’ ye; ye’ll see the eyes of the Gordons, an’ all the rest of the folks about here, a stickin’ out as big as that,” said Godfrey, flourishing his clenched hand over the table. “As big as that, I say, an’ afore many days, too—p’rhaps next week!”

“Whats goin’ to happen, pop?” asked Dan.

“Something that’ll——”

Godfrey glanced out at the door, and seeing that the boys, whose approach had started the family on this subject of conversation, were near at hand, put on a very wise look and winked knowingly at his son, who was obliged to restrain his curiosity for the present.

We must stop here long enough to say a word concerning the new-comers, as it is possible that we shall often meet them hereafter. Their names were Donald and Hubert Gordon, and they lived about a mile from the cabin in which Godfrey Evans and his family lived. And in what part of the world was that? It doesn’t much matter, for as there is more truth than fiction in some of the incidents we are about to describe, we do not care to go too much into details. It will be enough to say that the scene of our story is laid, and that all the actors therein lived, in one of our Southern States not very far from the Mississippi river. As our tale progresses some attentive reader, who has paid close attention to his history, may be able to locate the exact spot.

Two boys with more cheerful, happy dispositions than Don and Bert Gordon possessed, it would be hard to find anywhere. Don was sixteen years of age and his brother one year younger. The former was a robust, manly youth, who took great delight in all out-of-doors sports, and who, like many other healthy youngsters, had some glaring faults that were the occasion of no little anxiety to his father and mother. One was his great propensity for mischief. He was not fond of books or school, but any wild scheme for “fun,” as he called it, particularly if it involved some risk on the part of those who participated in it, would enlist his hearty sympathy and cooperation. This led to the most unpleasant episode in Don’s life. He was a student at a certain high school in a neighboring city, and being thrown into the company of uneasy spirits like himself, he very soon so far forgot the solemn promises he had made his mother before leaving home, that he assisted in laying plans for mischief which others carried into execution. After that but little urging was necessary to induce him to take part in them himself; and being at last detected in some act that had been strictly forbidden, he was promptly expelled from the school.

It was wonderful what a change that made in Don Gordon. He began to see that his conduct was not calculated to gain and hold the respect of those whose respect was worth having, and thus far his resolution to do better had been firmly adhered to. There is a turning point in everybody’s existence—a time when a decision made affects one’s whole after career—and who knows but this may have been the critical period in Don’s life? It was not the disgrace attending his expulsion from school that awoke him, for that had a different effect. It made him spiteful and rebellious. It was the treatment he received after he reached home. Fortunately his father and mother were the kindest parents in the world, and the friendly talk they had with Don on the evening of the day he arrived at home, opened the young man’s eyes; and every promise he made then had been faithfully kept. He and his brother were now prosecuting their studies at home under the direction of a private tutor who lived in the house with them.

Bert Gordon was not like his brother in anything except his appearance. His features resembled Don’s, but instead of the latter’s tough, wiry body, he had a slender little figure that could endure but trifling exposure and hardship, and a delicate constitution that had been badly shattered by the plague of that south-western region—the fever and ague. He took but little interest in the violent sports of which his brother was so fond; and if he had consulted his own inclinations, he would any day have chosen an easy-chair and a good book in preference to a morning’s gallop. But the doctor insisted on daily exercise, and that was one reason why General Gordon had purchased the “speckled ponies” which were so obnoxious to Godfrey Evans and his son Dan.

The ponies were beauties, and Dan called them “circus hosses” because their color was piebald, like that of a performing steed he had once seen in a small show that stopped for a day at Rochdale, as the steamboat-landing three miles distant was called. Their long, wavy manes reached to their knees, their tails swept the ground as they walked, and their favorite gait was an easy amble which scarcely moved their riders in the saddles. They were not fiery or swift enough to suit Don, who always went at a high-pressure rate, but they suited Bert very well. They would stand fire like old cavalry horses, and many a fine bunch of quails and squirrels had their owners shot from their backs.

As the boys came ambling along, talking and laughing with each other as though they felt at peace with themselves and all the world, the inmates of the cabin turned to look at them.

“Another dog,” growled Godfrey, as his eyes rested on a splendid young pointer that trotted along behind Don’s horse. “They’ve got a new dog every day. What it takes to keep them wuthless curs would make me rich!”

“They are not worthless curs,” said David, in a low tone. “They are fine hunting dogs, and the general has one that cost him a hundred dollars!”

“An’ the Gordons hain’t got no money, I think I heared ye say,” sneered his father. “How then can they buy dogs with a hundred dollars, I’d like to know?”

“Don’t talk so loud,” interrupted David. “You don’t want them to hear you, do you?”

“I don’t keer who hears me when I say——”

Just then there was a clatter of hoofs in front of the cabin, which ceased suddenly as the new-comers drew rein before the open door.

“Is David at—O, I beg pardon,” exclaimed a cheery voice. “We did not know you were at dinner. We will wait, as we are in no hurry.”

“I’m here, and ready to serve you any way I can,” said David, rising from the block of wood which served him for a chair. “I have finished my dinner.”

“All right,” said Don. “I’ve brought you a new dog to break for me. Isn’t he a beauty? He is a present from a friend living in Memphis. He is five months old, and as I found him standing the chickens in the yard this morning, I think it high time he was taught something. I’ll give you what I promised, and what we gave you for breaking the others.”

While Don was speaking, Godfrey, who sat within reach of his son, turned about on his barrel and slily pulled David by the sleeve of his coat; but the boy paid no attention to him—that is, he did not look at him. But he did pull his sleeve out of his father’s grasp, and move toward the other side of the door out of reach.

“I’ll do the best I can with him,” said David.

“And that will be as well as anybody can do,” returned Don. “We will leave him in your charge and I hope the next time I see him, I can take him to the field for a good day’s sport. Take the best of care of him, for he is a valuable animal.”

David caught the pointer by a collar he wore around his neck, and led him behind the cabin to a kennel he had there, while the brothers, after lifting their hats to Mrs. Evans, turned about and galloped away.

“You’re a purty son, you are,” said Godfrey, as David, having secured the pointer, came back and seated himself on his block of wood again. “Didn’t yer feel me a pullin’ an’ a haulin’ at yer coat, an’ tryin’ to tell yer not to promise to break that pup fur them ’ristocrats?”

“I did,” answered David.

“Then why didn’t ye pay some heed to it?”

“Because I want the ten dollars—that’s why.”

“Ten dollars!” repeated Godfrey, opening his eyes. “Is that what yer goin’ to get fur it? It’s a heap of money fur a boy like you to make so easy, an’ that’s just what makes me ’spise them Gordons so. They’ve got ten dollars to pay fur breakin’ a pup that haint wuth his salt, an’ I haint got ten cents to buy grub with. Just look at this yere!”

Godfrey went on moving his jack-knife over the table which was supplied with nothing but corn bread, fat bacon and buttermilk in the way of eatables and drinkables.

“Now aint this a purty mess for a white man an’ a gentleman to set down to? If I couldn’t remember the time when things was different, it wouldn’t be nigh so hard; but I can. ’Taint so very long ago that we had fresh meat, an’ coffee, an’ pies, an’ cakes, an’ light bread fur grub, an’ I had a pipe of store tobacker to smoke arter eatin’ it; but now—dog-gone sich luck!” cried Godfrey, striking the table such a blow with his open hand that the dishes jumped into the air, and the cracked pitcher, which held what was left of the buttermilk, fell in pieces, allowing its contents to run out among the plates.

“Thar’s something else gone up,” said Godfrey, his anger appeased for the moment by the sight of the ruins of the pitcher. “An’ I haint got no stamps to buy another. Dave, I don’t keer if ye be goin’ to get ten dollars fur it, don’t ye tech that pinter pup ’ceptin’ to tote him back where he belongs. Do ye hear?”

“I reckon I do,” replied David.

“Wal, be ye goin’ to mind what I say to ye?”

“No, I aint.”

“Ye haint? I say to ye, boy,” exclaimed Godfrey, raising his hand over the table again, “boy, I say to ye——”

“Now, pop, don’t break no more dishes,” interrupted Dan, “’kase if ye do, we’ll have to eat off’n bark plates purty soon, an’ drink out’n gourds. Let Dave break the pinter pup if he wants to. What odds does it make to you?”

“It makes a heap of odds, the fust thing ye know,” replied his father. “Kase they’s ’ristocrats, an’ we’ve got just as good a right to have ten dollars to pay somebody fur breakin’ our huntin’ dogs, as they have. An’ ’sides, don’t they make things wuss fur poor folks like us nor they’d oughter? They do, an’ this is the way they go about it: Look at them pack of hound dogs they brought down from Kaintuck last summer! I don’t say nothing about the money they throwed away when they bought ’em, an’ which was more’n enough to keep all our jaws a waggin’ fur one good year, I bet ye, an’ on good grub too, but I jest axes ye, what’s them hound dogs fur? Why just as soon as the leaves begin to fall, them youngsters will take to the swamps, an’ them hound dogs will go a tearin’ an’ a yelpin’ through these woods at sich a rate, that the fust thing we know the game will all be done drove out of the country, an’ we can’t get nu deer nor bar meat fur grub. That’s what makes me ’spise them hound dogs so.”

These remarks of his father’s recalled to Dan’s mind an incident that had happened during the previous spring. He brightened up suddenly as if he were thinking of something that afforded him infinite satisfaction.

CHAPTER II.
GODFREY BUILDS AIR-CASTLES.

“THEM hound dogs needn’t worry you none,” said Dan. “I’ll take keer of them!”

“What be ye goin’ to do?” asked his father.

“I’m goin’ to make them two fellers what owns ’em promise to let my things they finds in the woods alone, or——”

Here Dan glanced hastily at his brother. David was looking intently at his plate, but the expression on his face told that he was listening with all his ears. So Dan did not finish the sentence, but raised his hand to his face and shut one eye as if he were glancing along the barrel of a rifle.

“Goin’ to shoot ’em, be ye?” exclaimed his father. “Wal, say so then, and don’t be afraid. Nobody ain’t agoin’ to harm ye fur it.”

“Yes,” said Dan doggedly, seeing that his secret was out. “I’m goin’ to shoot ’em!”

“You hadn’t better stay about here after you do it,” said David. “The general will have the law on you.”

“How’ll he find out who done it, I’d like to know?” snapped his brother. “An’, ’sides, hain’t I got jest as much right to spile his things as his boys have to spile mine? Didn’t I meet ’em one day last spring as they were ridin’ out of the woods on them circus hosses of their’n, an’ didn’t they tell me that they’d pulled down more’n a dozen turkey traps they’d found among the hills, kase it was agin the law, or, if it wasn’t it had oughter be, to ketch turkeys at that time of the year? An’ didn’t I go straight to the woods when I left them, an’ didn’t I find that it was my own traps they had pulled down? You’re right I did; an’ I said then that I’d get even with ’em some day fur that same piece of work. You want to keep a close eye on that pinter pup,” he added shaking a warning finger at his brother.

“I believe you,” answered David. “A fellow who will take revenge on a dumb brute for something his owner did to him, is mean enough for anything, and perhaps I had better take good care of myself, too. If you intend to hurt the dog say so, and I will take him back where he belongs.”

“Wal, seein’ it’s you, I wont tech him,” said Dan, with more eagerness and haste than the circumstances seemed to warrant. “But arter his owner gets him in his hands, he wants to watch out. Now, pop,” added Dan, seeing that his father was about to speak, “don’t you go to raisin’ a row. Let Dave break the dog, if he wants to. It don’t cost you nothing. What did you mean when you said a little while ago that things is a goin’ to change with us?”

Godfrey’s face lost its angry scowl and brightened at once.

“I meant something that’ll extonish ye when ye hear it—the hul on ye,” he replied, with a cheerful wink at his hopeful son, “an’ it won’t take me long to tell it, nuther. You remember that when the war fust broke out, Gen’ral Gordon, knowin’ which side of his bread had the butter onto it, got all his money changed into gold and silver, and brought it here to his house an’ hid it, don’t ye?”

Of course the family all remembered it. The incident had offered gossip for the neighborhood for months after it happened.

“Wal,” continued Godfrey, “when the Yanks come in here, them gold and silver dollars, an’ all the watches belongin’ to the family, an’ all the silver an’ chiny dishes, an’ them gold things Mrs. Gordon an’ her gals wore around their wrists, was done took an’ hid. They was buried in the ground, some in one place an’ some in another, so’t the Yanks couldn’t find ’em. Mrs. Gordon an’ her gals buried some of ’em with their own hands, among the flower-beds in front of the place whar the house then stood, an’ one of the niggers, ole Jordan—ye remember him, I reckon—done buried the rest. I know, kase Jordan told me so hisself. Jordan, ye know, was raised by the gen’ral’s father from the time he was a picaninny, an’ bein’ as honest as a nigger ever gets to be, his missus she sot a heap of store by him, an’ said thar wasn’t no better servant a goin’.

“Wal, when the gen’ral’s wife, she heared that the Yanks was a comin’ with them gunboats of their’n, she sent fur Jordan an’ she says to him: ‘Jordan, you see that thar bar’l? Thar’s eighty thousand dollars in gold an’ silver into it. Now, Jordan, you take that thar bar’l, an’ tote it off as quick as you can, an’ hide it in the ground, an’ remember an’ don’t let nobody see ye, an’ don’t say nothin’ to nobody, nuther.’ So Jordan he done tuk the bar’l an’ rolled it down to the tater patch, and digged a hole as quick as he could an’ kivered it up, an’ nobody, not even the missus, don’t know whar he put it!”

Here Godfrey paused to take breath, and leaning his elbows on the table, looked from one to the other of the little group before him to see what they thought about it.

“Wal, what of it?” said Dan, who was the first to speak.

“What of it?” repeated his father. “Thar’s a heap of it, the fust thing you know—a hul bar’l full; an’ what’s to hinder us from gettin’ it fur our own, I’d like to know?”

A gleam of intelligence shot across Dan’s swarthy face, and even David and his mother looked up and began to take some interest in what Godfrey was saying.

“Jordan went off with the Yanks that very night, an’ he hasn’t been seed since,” Godfrey went on. “That was ten year ago, come next winter, an’ nobody don’t know whar that bar’l with the eighty thousand in gold and silver is. I was to hum on a furlong then, ye know, an’ kept hid in the cane while the Yanks was here; but I seed Jordan, an’ he told me that the bar’l was in the tater patch. I jest happened to think of it this mornin’ while I was a huntin’ in the swamp; an’ then I axed myself, wasn’t I a dunce to be livin’ in this way, when thar was eighty thousand dollars to be had fur the diggin’? An’ I told myself yes, I was. So I come hum right quick, an’ I’m done huntin’ fur a livin’ now!”

“Are you going to look fur that barrel, father?” asked David.

“I aint a goin’ to do nothing else. I know right whar that tater patch was, an’ me an’ Dan’ll dig it so full of holes that the folks up to Gordon’s house will think an army is goin’ to build a fort thar.”

“And what will you do with it if you find it?”

“What’ll I do with it?” cried Godfrey, rising to his feet, spreading out his arms and turning slowly around so that his son could have a good view of him. “Can you look at me an’ all of us an’ ax me what I’ll do with it? I’ll keep it fur myself, an’ spend it like a lord, too!”

“Would you like to have somebody serve you that way?” asked David. “It wouldn’t be honest.”

“Honest!” Godfrey almost screamed. “Jest listen to him, now! That’s what makes me ’spise them Gordons so. They can’t keep their big ’ristocratic ideas to their selves, but must tell ’em to my boys, an’ larn one of ’em to say ‘father’ an’ ‘mother,’ ’stead of callin’ us ‘pop’ an’ ‘mam,’ like he had oughter do. An’ then to talk about my spendin’ my time a diggin’ an’ a huntin’ fur that thar bar’l, an’ arter findin’ it, to give it up to them as has got more’n their share already, an’ here’s us as poor as Job’s turkey! No, sir,” said Godfrey, emphatically. “If I find that thar bar’l I’ll keep it, an’ say nothing to nobody.”

“But it belongs to the Gordons,” said David, not at all daunted by his father’s speech, “and you have no right to lay a finger on it.”

“Wal, you’ll see if I don’t lay two whole hands onto it if I can find it; an’ if I don’t find it, it won’t be kase I don’t do no diggin’, I bet ye. Jest think of it,” said Godfrey, growing animated over the prospect of so great and sudden wealth. “Here’s us been a livin’ like the pigs in the gutter all these years, when we might have been ridin’ our own hosses an’ growin’ fat off the best kind of grub! Eighty thousand dollars! Enough to fill a hul bar’l! Why, one day, in the good old times, when I was a talkin’ with the gen’ral, he says to me: ‘Godfrey, how much is you wuth?’ Wal, I didn’t know, kase I hadn’t never thought of it none; but I told him I had so many niggers, wuth so much a head; so many cow brutes; so many hoss an’ mule brutes; so much land; an’ so many pig brutes runnin’ in the swamp. The gen’ral he figures it up, an’ tells me I wus wuth nigh on to twelve or fifteen thousand dollars, most likely it was nigher fifteen nor twelve. I tell you I felt big arter that. I held my head up high, like a steer in the corn, an’ felt like axin’ every man I met did he know I wus wuth fifteen thousand dollars, an’ it all made with these yer two hands, too? But eighty thousand! Whew! Why didn’t I think of that bar’l long ago? I reckin I’ll go down to the landin’ an’ ax Silas Jones will he trust me fur some store tobacker. I can tell him that I’ll be able to buy his hul consarn out next week!”

As Godfrey said this he arose from his barrel, and, taking his rifle down from its place over the door, went out of the cabin followed by Dan, who also carried a rifle on his shoulder. David and his mother watched them in silence until they had passed down the road out of sight, and then turned and looked at each other.

“Is it true about the barrel?” asked the boy at length.

“I am sure I don’t know,” was his mother’s answer, “and for the sake of all concerned I hope it is not. It is true that all the gold and silver, and other valuables belonging to the Gordon family, were buried on the night the levee was cut, and it is equally true that Jordan buried some of it. He went down the Pass with the gunboats when they left, and has never been seen or heard of since. What has become of him, nobody knows; and whether he went without telling Mrs. Gordon where he had hidden the valuables, is a question that no one outside the general’s family is able to answer. It may be possible that he did, for such things have happened.”

“When and where?” asked David.

“Right here in this neighborhood. After the war was over, and the soldiers began to return, there came to this landing a man named Brown, who had been a sailor on one of the Union gunboats. He did not look like a person who had more money than he wanted, but he said he had, and that his object in coming here was to rent a plantation and go to raising cotton. As almost everybody was ready to sell or rent, several plantations were offered him, but the only one he would look at was Colonel Cisco’s—an old worn-out place that no one else would have as a gift. The widow—the colonel was killed in the army, you know—was glad to get the hundred dollars Mr. Brown offered her to bind the bargain, and let him have the place at once. He said he could do nothing until his partner came from Memphis with the mules, provisions and other things needed to carry on plantations; but he took possession of the house, and lived there two months all by himself. He was never seen during the daytime. He visited none of the neighbors, and didn’t seem to want to have anybody call on him; but people went all the same, and one day somebody found out that the flower-beds in the back yard, on which Mrs. Cisco had spent so much time, had all been dug up, and that there was a hole there that one could bury a house in. The man didn’t like it at all because it had been found out, and said he was digging a cellar. It was discovered afterward, however, that all this work had been done in the night, and that Mr. Brown never thought of putting a cellar there.”

“What did he intend to put there then?” asked David, when his mother paused.

“Nothing. He hoped to take something out; but he was taken sick, and that was the end of his scheme. He had such a hard time getting well, that when he was able to be about again, he made up his mind that he had seen enough of the South, and that he would go home at once and stay there. He wanted to do something for the people who had been so kind to him during his sickness, so he took the man who had done the most for him into his secret, and told him what had brought him there. In the first place he had no partner, no money—only just enough to pay his railroad and steamboat fare to the place where he wanted to go—and no intention of cultivating the plantation. There was money buried somewhere near the house—he wanted it, and this was the way he found out about it:

“Attached to the same gunboat to which Mr. Brown belonged was a negro, who had once been Colonel Cisco’s house servant. During the war the colonel’s family hid all their valuables in the ground, just as all our people did who had anything to hide, and this servant helped them bury money and silver, to the amount of thirty thousand dollars and over. After he ran away and got on the gunboat, he told about it, and boasted that when the war closed he would soon make a rich man of himself; but he was taken sick, and this Mr. Brown, who was the doctor’s steward, took care of him. Before he died he told the steward about the buried money, and described the place where it was hidden so accurately that Mr. Brown could have found it in the darkest of nights. That was what made him hire the Cisco plantation.”

“Well, did he get the money?” asked David, who was deeply interested.

“People think not. If he had found it, he would not have been likely to say anything about it; and besides he would have had more than enough to take him home.”

“Didn’t Mrs. Cisco ever say anything about it?”

“Yes, and laughed at the man for his pains. Her husband had money once, she said, and buried some of it a dozen different times; but it was dug up again as soon as the danger of losing it had passed, and what they didn’t use was stolen from them by the guerillas. She’s now almost as poor as ourselves, Mrs. Cisco is. Her house was not burned, and in that respect only is she better off than we are.”

“We were rich once, were we not, mother?”

“No, we were not rich, but we had enough. Your father owned a mile square of land that was all paid for—he’s got that yet, but it don’t seem to do him any good, for the clearings have all grown up to briers—and we had a good house and plenty to eat and wear. He was a hard-working, saving man then, and so different from what he is now, that I sometimes think that somebody else has come to me from the southern army, and is passing himself off for Godfrey. We were happy in those days,” said Mrs. Evans, gazing earnestly into the little pile of coals on the hearth, as if the scenes she so well remembered were clearly pictured there. “I can remember when our cotton gin was kept running night and day; and I have seen eight four-horse teams going up the road toward the landing loaded with your father’s cotton. You can’t remember anything about it, for you were too young at the time.”

“No,” said David, “but I can remember when we lived in that brush shantee that had a fire burning in front of it night and day; and I can remember of seeing you cry, and father walking up and down and swinging his arms as if he were crazy.”

“That was just after we were burned out. You were four years old then. Until that time we never thought we should feel much of the war. Although we were only eight miles from the river, we used to feel perfectly safe, so far as the Federals were concerned. We used to see Redburn’s guerillas about once a week, but they belonged to our own side, and at first we did not stand in any fear of them, although we soon learned to dread them more than we did the Yankees. We never were afraid that they would hurt us, but they stole everything they could lay their hands on, and finally got so bad that General Imboden sent them word that if they didn’t do better he would come in with a regiment and wipe them off the face of the earth. We never thought that the Federals would get in here, and you don’t know how frightened we were when we found that in a few days their gunboats would be at our very doors. One day in February—that was in ’63—the Union soldiers came down from Helena and cut the levee. The water was high in the river, and it ran down through the pass and into Diamond lake here, and overflowed the bottoms until we thought it would drown us all. Then the gunboats came—two big iron-clads, a lot of tin-clads, and six thousand soldiers. They stopped here long enough to burn every dwelling-house and cotton-gin in the country for miles around, and then went on down the pass. Your father was at home then on a furlough, and I tell you they came pretty near catching him!”

“How was it?” asked David, who never grew weary of listening to the story, although he had heard it probably a score of times.

CHAPTER III.
DAN’S STRATEGY.

“IT happened one day while we were at dinner,” replied his mother. “The Union soldiers had been at work on the levee for two or three days, and we were expecting the boats through every hour. Godfrey kept his saddle on his horse night and day, and his weapons close at hand, so that he could catch them up at any moment. While we were eating dinner on this particular day, your father, who sat opposite the window, looked up all of a sudden, and before I could ask him the reason for his pale face, he was on his feet and out at the door. I looked through the window, and right here in our lake, and not fifty yards from the door, was the first gunboat I had ever seen. The Federals had got through the levee at last, and one of their boats, being of that sort which don’t make any noise when they run, was right upon us before we knew it. I don’t know her name to this day, but she had the figure 9 painted on her pilot house, and I could see the cannons sticking out of the port-holes. On her upper deck were a lot of cotton bales placed like breastworks, and behind these cotton bales were fifty or sixty men, all with muskets in their hands, and watching and waiting for a chance to shoot at somebody. Well, they found that chance as soon as your father was fairly out at the door. Two jumps brought him to his horse which was hitched in the yard, another put him in the saddle, and in a minute more he was running the gauntlet.”

“Wasn’t it strange that he escaped being hit?”

“It was providential,” replied Mrs. Evans. “I have heard Godfrey himself say that he could have shot a squirrel’s eye out at the distance he was from the gunboat. They began to shoot at him as soon as he left the house, and I sat there and looked through the window and saw them do it. They fired as fast as they could get a sight at him, and the guns popped so rapidly that they reminded me of a burning cane-brake. When they stopped, I managed to get up and go to the door. There was a big cotton field where this brier patch is now, and it was half a mile wide. On the other side of it was a rail fence that ran between the field and the woods, and there I saw Godfrey’s white horse. I thought at first that Godfrey wasn’t with him, but he was. He was leaning over and throwing the top rails off the fence. When he had done that, he straightened up, and seeing me standing in the door, he waived his hat to let me know that he was safe. Then he jumped his horse over the fence into the woods, and rode away out of sight.

“At that minute you and Daniel began to cry, and when I turned about to see what the matter was, I found the road blue with Federals. The boat had landed in front of the house, and a party was coming off with an officer. They entered without ceremony, and asked me who it was that rode off on that white horse, and if I knew where there were any weapons. I told them that he was my husband and your father, and that he had taken all the weapons with him. They evidently did not believe the last statement, for they searched every room in the house, and tumbled things about at a great rate; but they didn’t break anything, and all I missed after they were gone was your father’s picture which he had just had taken for me in Rochdale.

“Having satisfied themselves that there were no weapons in the house, the sailors went back to the boat, which moved off into the lake, and went down the Pass toward Coldwater. I was glad when they were gone, and glad too to be let off so easily, for I had been told that these gunboat men were awful fellows; but they never troubled us, although we saw hundreds of them afterward. It was the soldiers that did the damage and our experience with them began the very next day. A transport loaded with them came into the lake, and the soldiers camped on our plantation. When they first came, we had cows, pigs, chickens and milk and butter; but in less than an hour we had none of these things left, and but little furniture. They took the rocking-chairs out to sit in beside their camp-fires, and broke the tables, washstands and bureaus up into firewood, when there were plenty of fence-rails to be had for the taking. Then one of them said there wasn’t light enough for them to eat by, but he’d soon have more, and he did; for he pulled a straw bed into the middle of one of the rooms and touched a match to it.

“How I lived through that night I don’t know. When morning came the house was gone and so were the soldiers; and I was turned out of doors with two little children to take care of. Your father came back as soon as the soldiers were all out of sight, and threw up a little brush shantee, that we lived in, until some of the neighbors could get together and build us some better shelter. They put up this cabin for us, and after we had time to collect the clothing and furniture the soldiers had left us, we found that we were not so badly off after all. But the war was hardly more than half through then, and we had a good deal to stand before peace was declared. The guerillas came next, and you see just what they left us. I thought things would go better with us when your father came home, but somehow they didn’t. Times have been growing harder instead of better. We’re getting poorer and poorer every year, and mercy knows what’s going to become of us!”

“Well, it’s one comfort to know that we can’t be much worse off than we are now,” said David. “It isn’t possible. But keep up a good heart, mother. I’ve got some news for you, and it’s better than that barrel business too, for it’s honest. I have a chance to make a hundred and fifty dollars.”

Mrs. Evans opened her eyes and looked at David without speaking.

“It’s a fact,” said the boy, “and Don Gordon is the one who put me in the way to do it. You know his father takes lots of papers, and among them is the Rod and Gun, which tells all about fishing and hunting. Well, Don was reading this paper the other day, and he found in it an advertisement asking for live quail—fifty dozen of them. He showed it to me last night, and asked me why couldn’t I catch them and send them to the man.”

“Who wants them, and what is he going to do with them after he gets them?” asked Mrs. Evans.

“O, somebody up North wants ’em. Don says they had a hard time up there last winter. The weather was awful cold, the snow was so deep that the birds couldn’t get anything to eat, and the quail all died. This man belongs to some kind of a club—a ‘sportsman’s club,’ I think Don called it—and he wants these quail to stock the country again. When he gets them, he’s going to turn them loose and let them go. He offers three dollars and a half a dozen. Don says it will cost something to send them there, but that I can make three dollars on every dozen just as easy as falling off a log. Say, mother, don’t say anything to father or Dan about it, will you?”

Mrs. Evans promised that she would not.

“You see,” added David, by way of explanation, “they always want me to divide when I’ve got any money, but they never say a word about sharing with me when they have any. Besides, what they get never does anybody any good, not even themselves; and, mother, if I get this hundred and fifty, I want it to do you some good. You need stockings, and shoes, and a new dress.”

Mrs. Evans placed her hand tenderly on the boy’s head, and told herself that if all her family cared as much for her comfort as he did, she would fare better.

“Do you think you can catch so many?” she asked. “Fifty dozen is a large number.”

“I know it, but just see what I’ve done already. Last winter, when we were so poor that nobody would trust us for anything to eat, and we couldn’t raise money to buy powder and shot to shoot game with, I kept the family in food, didn’t I?”

Mrs. Evans remembered it perfectly, and knew that providing the family with something to eat was not all this fifteen year old boy had done during that hard winter. By the aid of his traps he had kept his mother comfortably clothed, and it was seldom indeed that he could not produce a dollar for the purchase of such luxuries as tea and coffee.

“Well,” continued David, “one trap did it all. It caught just as many quail as we could eat and sell. One day I took twenty-seven out of it. This winter I shall set a dozen traps, and suppose I catch five a day in each one of them! If I do, it will take me just ten days to fill the order.”

“But wouldn’t it first be a good plan to write to this man and make a bargain with him? Suppose somebody traps and sends him the fifty dozen before you do?”

“O, that’s all provided for. Don said he would write to the man last night, and I shall not begin until I hear from him. One hundred and fifty dollars for the quail, and ten dollars for breaking the pointer. One hundred and sixty dollars in all. That will help us through the winter, and if father and Dan would only do something to bring in as much more, we’d get along well enough. But I must be off to the fields now, mother. I’ll have a quail for your supper, sure.”

As David said this he took a rusty, single barrel shot gun down from some hooks over the door, threw a miserable apology for a game bag over his shoulder, kissed his mother and went out of the cabin. He unfastened the pointer, and with the animal trotting contentedly at his heels, made his way through the brier-patch toward the nearest open field.

“There’s one thing I didn’t tell mother,” thought David, “and that is, I can get ten dollars just as soon as I have a mind to ask for it. It will take perhaps two months to break this dog so that he will work even passably well in the field; but I needn’t wait that long for the money, because Don told me I could have it whenever I wanted it. You see he isn’t afraid to trust me. If it wasn’t for the looks of the thing I’d ask him for it this very afternoon. But I’ll wait a day or two, and then won’t I astonish mother with the bundle of things I’ll bring her from the store? Dan and father shan’t see a cent of it, and neither will I spend any of it on myself. Mother needs it more than anybody else, and she shall have it all. Hallo!” exclaimed David, as the little piping note of warning the quail utters when suddenly disturbed, fell on his ear. “Come here, pup—I declare, I forgot to ask your master what your name is—come here, and let’s see how much or how little you know!”

David was standing close beside a fence which ran between the brier-patch and a stubble-field. He looked over into the field when he heard the notes of warning, and saw a flock of quails running through the stubble, and directing their course toward a little thicket of bushes that grew on the banks of a bayou near by. Had Dan Evans been there with that shot gun in his hands, he would have blazed away at once, and could hardly have failed to kill or wound three or four of the flock, so closely were they huddled together. That was the kind of a hunter Dan was; but David, having learned what he knew of bird shooting from Don Gordon, who was a thoroughbred young sportsman, would have allowed the game to go off scot free before he would have made a “pot shot” at them. Shooting on the wing requires skill on the part of the hunter, and gives the game the best chance for its life; and this was the method David always adopted. He lifted the pup over the fence, got over himself, and with a waive of his hand and a “Hie on, old boy!” walked toward the spot where the flock had last been seen.

The dog seemed to understand him perfectly, and was off like a shot. Of course he would not quarter the ground in obedience to a motion of the boy’s hand—he had not learned that yet—but he searched the stubble thoroughly, and when he struck the trail of the running flock, he began to follow it up like an old dog. Suddenly he stopped and stood as motionless as if he had been turned into stone. He was pointing a quail hidden in the stubble almost under his nose. David walked up, flushed the bird, and when it was in the air stopped it as neatly with his old rusty gun as any champion shot could have done it. Then the training of the dog began. He did not drop to shot nor did he come to heel when ordered to do so; and these things, together with many others, must be taught him before he could be called an educated bird dog. With perfect confidence in David’s ability to break him to his owner’s entire satisfaction, we will leave him to the enjoyment of his afternoon’s sport, and go back to Godfrey and Dan, whom we left walking down the road toward the steamboat landing.

“I say, Dan,” exclaimed Godfrey, as soon as they were out of hearing of David and his mother, “ye wouldn’t mind goin’ over to the gen’ral’s an’ axin’ some of his niggers fur the loan of a shovel fur a few days, would ye? We hain’t got nothin’ to dig up that thar bar’l with. Ye needn’t mind tellin’ what we want it fur, ye know. If anybody axes ye, ye might say yer mother’s poorly from the fever’n ager, an’ ye want to dig up some yarbs to make her some tea.”

“All right,” said Dan. “I’ll go.”

“I wish I had a dollar,” continued his father. “Thar’s goin’ to be a shootin’ match fur beef down to the landin’ this arternoon, an’ if I could go in, I’d be a’most sartin to win one of the hind-quarters. Thar hain’t many can beat me shootin’, thar hain’t.”

“I reckon mebbe I mought find a dollar fur ye, if ye’ll promise honor bright to pay it back to me,” said Dan.

“Ye’ll find a dollar fur me?” exclaimed his father, opening his eyes in amazement. “Whar?”

“Wal, now, it don’t make no odds to ye whar I git it, so long as I git it, does it?” asked Dan.

“Nary time,” replied his father, suddenly stopping in the road and extending his hand to his son. “Ye allers was a good boy, Dannie, an’ fur downright ’cuteness an’ smartness I’ll match ye agin them book-larnt fellers up to the gen’ral’s any time. In course it don’t make no sort of odds to me whar ye git the dollar, nor how ye git it nuther, so long as ye do git it. Ye ain’t a foolin’ me now?” added Godfrey, looking suspiciously at his son. It was not often that Dan had any money of his own, and his offer to lend so large an amount as a dollar, astonished and perplexed his father, who found it hard work to persuade himself that his ears had not deceived him.

“No, I hain’t a foolin’ ye,” returned Dan. “Ye go on down to the landin’ now, an’ when I come thar I’ll have the dollar in my pocket, an’ the shovel hid away somewhar so’t I can easy find it again.”

“Yer a good boy, Dannie, an’ I’m monstrous proud of yer,” said Godfrey, once more giving his son’s hand a hearty gripe and shake. “An’, Dannie, if the time ever comes when——”

Godfrey suddenly paused, while an expression of great astonishment and even of pain settled on his face.

“Dannie,” said he, in a tone of voice very unlike that he had just used in addressing his son, “ye hain’t been an’ found that bar’l with the eighty thousand in it, has yer?”

“No, I hain’t,” replied Dan.

“Kase if ye have, and ye don’t go havers with yer poor ole pop, what’s fit the Yanks an’ worked so hard to support ye like a gentleman’s son had oughter be supported, ye’ll be the meanest boy that ever was wrapped up in ragged clothes, an’ I’ll take the cowhide to ye, big as ye be!”

“Wal, ye needn’t go to ravin’ that thar way, kase I hain’t found the bar’l,” said Dan; “if I had, I should have brung it to ye the fust thing. I didn’t know it was thar till ye told me.”

“I am powerful glad to hear it, Dannie,” said Godfrey, greatly relieved; “ye’d oughter brung it to me if ye’d found it, kase I’m yer pop. I’m the oldest an’ know what’s best fur us all, an’ it’s the properest thing that I should have the dealin’ out of the money when we gets it. But ye’ll find I won’t be no ways stingy. I’ll dress ye up like a gentleman, an’ ye shall have a circus hoss too, if ye want one.”

“Now, pop, don’t forget that, will yer?” said Dan, a broad grin overspreading his face, when he thought how delighted he should feel if he could only ride about the country as neatly dressed and as well mounted as Don and Bert Gordon, whom he greatly envied. “An’ I wants one of them guns what breaks in two in the middle, an’ you shove the powder an’ shot in behind, ’stead of drivin’ them down with a ramrod. An’ I want one of them fishpoles that a feller can take all to pieces an’ carry under his arm, an’ sum of them shiny boots that ye can allers see yer face in no matter whether ye black ’em or not—sich as Don wears on Sundays.”

“Ye shall have ’em all, my son,” said Godfrey, encouragingly, “an’ as many more things us ye want. Now here we are at the gen’ral’s lane. I’ll go on, an’ when I see ye agin I shall look fur that dollar sartin. I’ll be an awful tuk back, deceived an’ upsot man if I don’t have a hand in that shootin’ match,” added Godfrey, hoping by the use of adjectives to convey to Dan’s mind some idea of the intense and bitter disappointment he should feel if the expected dollar was not forthcoming.

Dan repeated the promise which he had made so often that he was tired of it, and the two separated, Godfrey keeping on towards the landing, while Dan turned up the lane that led toward General Gordon’s house. The boy made his way at once to the barn, and there found a negro hostler, who, after listening to his request, brought out a shovel, which he handed to Dan with many injunctions to be careful of it, and to return it the minute he was done using it. Dan readily promised, and, wondering what the hostler would think if he knew that the implement was to be used to unearth some of the general’s buried wealth, leaned the shovel up in one corner where he could find it again when he wanted it. Then placing his rifle beside it, he bent his steps toward the house, and passing around one of the wings, in which he knew the boys’ room was located, discovered Bert Gordon sitting by an open window reading a book.

“Hello, Dan,” said the latter, “are you looking for any one?”

“I come over to see Mr. Don,” said Dan, touching his hat respectfully and being very careful to put in the mister. Dan was always very polite when he had an object in view.

“He’s gone off somewhere—down to the landing, I think,” said Bert; “can I do anything for you?”

“I reckon,” replied Dan, “Mr. Bert, if ye please, sar, Dave axed me would I come up here an’ ax Mr. Don would he give him five of the ten dollars he promised him fur breakin’ that pinter pup, now.”

“Um!” said Bert, somewhat surprised at the request. “Why didn’t David come himself?”

“Wal, ye see, he hated fur to pester ye. Kase you’ns has allers been so good to us, an’ we’re so dog-gone poor that we hain’t got no money to buy a new dress fur mother.”

“Oh!” said Bert, throwing down his book and jumping to his feet. “I haven’t so much money of my own, but perhaps I can borrow it of mother.”

He disappeared as he ceased speaking, while Dan stood chuckling over his good fortune, and hardly able to restrain himself, so delighted was he at the success of his stratagem.

“In course he’ll get it of his mother,” said Dan, “he’d get her head if he axed fur it. Didn’t I tell the ole man that I’d give him that dollar? I reckon we can both go to that shootin’ match now. Sarvent, Mr. Bert; much obliged to ye, sar,” he added aloud, as the boy came down the steps at that moment and handed him a crisp, new five-dollar bill; “if we an’ Dave can ever do ye a good turn, I hope ye’ll call on us.”

Bert said he would, and went back to his chair and his book, while Dan retraced his steps to the stable, picked up the shovel and his rifle, and went out into the lane. The shovel he hid in a fence corner, taking care to mark the spot so that he could find it again in the dark, if necessity should require it, and then shouldered his rifle and turned toward the landing. The money he carried in his hand, and feasted his eyes on it as he walked along. He could not admire it enough. He had owned but few bills so large as this in his lifetime, and he thought them the most beautiful things he had ever seen.

“I must make it go as fur as I can,” said he, to himself, “an’ I must have the other one, too. How am I goin’ to get it, I wonder? Mother can’t want another new dress right away, in course not; but she can be tuk awful sick with the ager, an’ want some money to buy some store tea, an’ we hain’t got none to give her. Won’t Dave jaw though when he finds it out? Who keers! He spends every cent he gits fur mother, an’ I reckon me an’ pop has a right to some of it. Pop’ll be awful oneasy to find out whar I got it, but if I tell him he’ll go back an’ get the other hisself; so I won’t tell him. I must get it broke too at the store afore I see him; kase if he knows I’ve got so much, mebbe he’ll want it all. ’Tain’t best to trust pop too fur.”

Perhaps the reader will now see why Dan was so anxious that his father should not prevent David from promising to break Don Gordon’s pointer. He wanted those ten dollars very badly, had made up his mind to have them; and now that he had half the amount in his pocket, he was supremely happy. He had robbed his brother, and abused Bert’s confidence, but those were matters that did not trouble him in the least. He had the money, and that was all he cared for.

CHAPTER IV.
THE SHOOTING MATCH.

THE steamboat landing toward which Godfrey Evans bent his way, was looked upon as a very important place by the settlers in that part of the state. The little collection of houses that had sprung up there contained a post-office, a few dwellings, and the only grocery and drug store to be found within a circle of twenty miles. The mail was brought there twice each week by a mounted carrier, who made regular trips between the landing and the county seat, which lay fifteen miles from the river. No particular packet stopped there, but there was considerable business done by the neighboring planters with the city of Memphis, in the way of plantation supplies and farming implements, and some steamboat called at the landing every week. Its arrival was regarded as an event of great consequence. Whenever five long whistles announced that a steamer was approaching, all the negroes and unemployed whites within hearing of the sound would hasten to the landing to see her come in, and watch the unloading of the cargo she brought. The sight was not a new or novel one to them, but the life they led there was so monotonous that any event, however trivial, that furnished them fresh topics for an hour’s conversation, was gladly welcomed. Godfrey Evans never missed a boat rain or shine. He was there nearly every day, and if he chanced to be absent some of the hangers-on always noticed it, and wondered what could be the matter.

Toward the landing Godfrey hastened after parting from his son, and entering the street which ran from the river back into the country, found himself in front of the grocery, and in the midst of a group of men who were congregated there. They all carried rifles in their hands, and the sharp, whip-like reports which now and then came from a little grove situated a few rods up the river bank, told that the shooting match was in progress.

Godfrey entered the store and drawing up before the counter, rapped on it with his knuckles to attract the attention of the proprietor, who was busy in the little room that opened off the rear. The rap quickly brought him out, but when he saw who his customer was, he stopped and asked:—

“What’s the matter, Godfrey?”

“I’ll take a plug of that amazin’ fine ole Virginy of your’n, if ye please, sir,” said Godfrey, leaning his rifle against the counter and thrusting his hand into his pocket.

The grocery keeper whistled softly to himself, but made no move to produce the required article. He wanted first to see what would be the result of his customer’s investigations. Godfrey continued to search his pockets—every one of them had a hole in it that he could have run his hand through—and his movements grew quicker, as his impatience to find something in them increased, and then slower, as the fact appeared to dawn upon him that there was nothing there.

“You don’t seem to pull out anything, Godfrey,” said the merchant.

“No, it’s a fact, I don’t seem to,” replied the customer. “I’ve left my pocket-book to hum, arter all. Say, Silas,” he added, sinking his voice almost to a whisper, and glancing hastily toward the crowd of men at the door, “ye wouldn’t mind trustin’ me till next week, I reckon, would ye?”

“Yes, I would,” was the blunt reply.

“Only till next week, I say,” repeated Godfrey. “I’ll have more money then nor a mule can haul away, an’ I’ll pay ye every red cent I owe ye!”

“Well, then I’ll sell you everything you want,” said the merchant.

“An’ won’t ye let me have nothin’ now?”

“No, I can’t. And, Godfrey, you’d be better off if you would save your half dollars and buy yourself a pair of shoes. It will not be long, now, before the cold winter rains will set in, and there’ll be frost and snow——”

“I know,” interrupted Godfrey. “But I can kill a heap of deer atween this time and that, an’ deer meat is goin’ to be wuth something han’some this year, kase game is so skase. Come on now, Silas!”

But Silas went off to the other side of the store to attend to the wants of another customer, and Godfrey, finding that no further notice was taken of his presence, picked up his rifle, went out of the door, and turned his face up the road again in the direction from which Dan was expected to appear.

“I’ll never do no more tradin’ with Silas,” said Godfrey to himself. “I’ll send to Memphis fur my things, the way the rest of the gentlemen do; an’ I shall be as fine a gentleman as the best of ’em when I find that bar’l, won’t I? Halloa, Dannie! whar’s that dollar? I reckon ye’ve got it.”

Dan was coming along the road with his head down, and his eyes fastened on the five-dollar bill, which he still held in his hand. Had his father remained silent, he could have walked up close to him before Dan would have known that there was any one near, so fully was his attention taken up with the greenback. Surprised and startled by the abrupt address, he hastily crumpled up the money and thrust it into his pocket.

“What’s that yer shovin’ out of sight so quick thar?” demanded Godfrey.

“I haint a shovin’ nothin’ out of sight,” answered Dan. “Can’t a feller put his gold toothpick into his pocket if he wants to?”

“Whar’s the dollar?” inquired his father.

“I hain’t got to the landin’ yet, have I?” asked Dan, in reply. “I told ye that when I got to the landin’ I’d have it fur ye.”

His father looked at him suspiciously. “Whar are ye goin’ to git it down here, an’ who’s goin’ to give it to ye?” he asked.

“Didn’t ye tell me that it don’t make no sort of odds to ye whar I git it, or who gives it to me, so long as I git it?” demanded Dan, impatiently. “Now, ye go down to the grove an’ stay thar, an’ when I come to ye, I’ll give ye the dollar.”

Godfrey was satisfied with this assurance—at least he appeared to be. He walked along with Dan until they came to the turn in the road, and then he went toward the grove where the shooting was going on, while Dan turned toward the post-office. The latter watched his father until he saw him join one of the little groups of men who were congregated under the trees, and then faced about and entered the store.

There were several customers in there, and Dan was obliged to await his turn. It came at last, and then he handed out his five-dollar bill, with the request that it might be changed into notes of smaller denomination. The grocer rapidly complied, and as Dan gathered up his money and turned to go out, he was astonished to find his father standing at his elbow. Being barefooted, Godfrey had entered the store and placed himself close by his son’s side without being observed. His face wore a look of amazement that was curious to behold. He did not know how much money Dan had in his possession, but he judged by the size of the roll he held in his hands, that it must be a large amount. He marvelled greatly as he followed the boy out of the store.

“Thar’s yer dollar, pop,” said Dan, who, finding that his secret was discovered, thought it best to put a bold face on the matter. “I told ye I’d be sartin to get it fur ye. Ye mustn’t forget to pay it back, or to get me them nice things ye promised when we find that bar’l.”

“No, I won’t,” said Godfrey, smiling joyously as he felt the bill between his fingers. “I’m goin’ to be a good pop to ye, Dannie, an’ now I’ll tell ye what I’ve been a thinkin’ of doin’ fur ye: yer gettin’ to be an amazin’ fine, strappin’ big boy, Dannie. Yer a’most as high up in the world as yer pop, an’ purty soon ye’ll be gettin’ to be a young man. Then ye’ll want store clothes an’ all sorts of nice things, and mebbe me an’ yer poor ole mam’ll lose yer, kase ye’ll be lookin’ around fur a wife.”

Dan grinned and thought of the little tow-headed girl he had so often been on the point of seeing safe home from church. The reason he didn’t do it was because when the critical time came, he could never muster up courage enough to speak to her.

“Yes, ye will,” continued his father; “an’ then ye’ll find that thar hain’t nothin’ in the world that takes with the gals, an’ the men folks too, like good clothes an’ shiny boots an’ hats. But it takes money to get them things. Now, I hain’t a goin’ to be the mean ole hulks to ye that my pop was to me. He left me with empty hands, to make a livin’ as best I could, but I’m goin’ to be a good pop to ye, an’ give ye a fine start. I’m goin’ to give ye half that bar’l when I find it.”

“How much’ll that be?” asked Dan.

“O, it’ll be a heap, I tell yer,” replied Godfrey, growing animated and hoping thus to work upon Dan’s feelings sufficiently to accomplish the object he had in view; “as much as—as—twenty thousand anyhow, an’ mebbe sixty,” added Godfrey, who was not very quick at figures. “An’ then, Dannie, if yer a monstrous good boy, an’ allers do jest as I tell ye, mebbe I’ll buy out Gen’ral Gordon an’ give ye his place. Then ye can have circus hosses, as many as ye want, an’ some of them amazin’ fine guns what break in two in the middle, an’ a sail-boat on the lake, an’ all the other nice things sich as Bert and Don has got.”

Dan grinned again and fairly trembled with excitement. The prospect of owning all these aids to happiness was enough to excite anybody.

“Now, Dannie, I won’t forget all this if ye will promise to be a good boy an’ do jest what I tell yer,” said his father. “Will ye?”

“I will, pop,” replied the boy, shaking hands with his sire, to show that he was in earnest. “Ye jest see if I don’t.”

“I’m powerful glad to hear ye say so, Dannie,” continued Godfrey; and now he came to the point at which he had all the while been aiming, but he broached it with no little hesitation, and anxiety as to the result.

“Now, Dannie,” said he, “don’t ye think that to pay me fur all these things I’m a goin’ to do fur ye, that ye’d oughter give me the rest of the money ye’ve got in yer pocket?”

“No, I don’t,” said Dan, promptly.

“What fur?”

“Kase I want it myself. I’m agoin’ into the shootin’ match too.”

“An’ shoot agin yer poor old pop, what’s fit the Yanks, an’ worked so hard fur ye? Dan, I’m extonished at yer! Now, Dannie, I wouldn’t go in, if I was ye, kase ye can’t win nothin’, an’ ’sides ye want to save yer money, don’t ye? That’s the way to get rich, Dannie. Let yer pop do the shootin’, an’ we’ll have a quarter of beef to carry home to-night, I warrant ye.”

But Dan would make no promises, and neither could his father’s most earnest entreaties induce him to surrender even the smallest portion of the money he had in his pocket. What he had in his possession he was sure of—the barrel, with its eighty thousand dollars, he was not sure of; and believing that a single bird in the hand was worth a whole flock in the woods, he declared it to be his unalterable determination to hold fast to every cent he had. Godfrey was highly exasperated, but he took good care not to show it. Their near approach to the grove and to the men assembled there, obliged him to cease his entreaties, and with the mental resolve that Dan should be made to repent his refusal, Godfrey went to hunt up the man who had charge of the shooting. To his great delight he learned that there were so many contestants that the entrance fee was only seventy-five cents. This left him a quarter of a dollar to spend, and he made all haste to do it. Forgetting the resolution he had formed a short time before, to spend no more money with Silas Jones, he hurried off to the store, and returned with a plug of the tobacco for which the merchant had refused to credit him. When he came back, he saw Dan stretched out on the ground behind a small log squinting along the barrel of his rifle, which was pointed at a piece of white paper fastened to a board, and placed against a tree a few yards away.

“The ongrateful scamp!” said his father, to himself. “He’s gone an’ spent six bits to go into the shootin’ match arter all. He ain’t fit to have money, he throws it about so scandalous. I’ll take keer that he don’t throw away no more.”

For the benefit of our city readers, who may like to know something of the sports and pastimes of those whose means of recreation are not so abundant as their own, we will tell how a shooting match is conducted in the South and West. In the first place, we are glad to say that it is very different from turkey shooting as carried on in the Northern States. In the latter there is no sport whatever. The luckless turkey is tied to a stump, so that it has no chance for life, and the marksmen station themselves at distances varying from one to two hundred and fifty yards, and shoot at it, until some one kills or wounds it. It is a cruel practice, and no boy or man either who has the least spark of humanity or love of fair play in him, will engage in it.

The Shooting-Match.

In the shooting matches of which we speak, the contestants do not shoot at the game, but at a mark. Each one provides himself with a piece of board, which is held over a fire until one side of it is thoroughly blackened. Upon this blackened surface a cross, like the sign +, is made with the point of a knife. The place where these two lines intersect is called the centre; and as it is no larger than the point of a pin, you can easily imagine how much skill is required to make a “dead-centre” shot. On this centre, to show where it is, is placed a piece of white paper—it may be half an inch or three or six inches square, as the shooter prefers—which is held in its place by a tack or wooden pin. The contestants then station themselves forty or sixty yards away, according as they want to shoot off-hand or with a rest, and the sport begins. The one who makes the best shot takes the first choice of the prizes, whatever they may be; the one who makes the second best, takes the second choice; and so on until all the prizes are gone.

These prizes may be turkeys, chickens or pigs; but beef is shot for more than anything else. Whatever the article is, it is furnished by some one of the contestants who sets a price upon it, and collects of each one who participates in the shooting an equal part of the amount. Thus, if a beef worth twenty dollars is shot for and there are twenty contestants, each one pays the owner a dollar. In this case there are six prizes—the two hind-quarters, the two fore-quarters, the hide and tallow, and the lead that is shot into the tree against which the boards are placed. The last prize is of no small value sometimes, especially to men who live four or five miles from a store. If there are twenty contestants and each one shoots a dozen times, the chunk of lead which will be cut out of the tree by the one who wins it, will furnish bullets enough to last him a year. As soon as the shooting is over the beef is killed, and each one takes whatever he may have been skilful enough to win.

This was the kind of a match that Dan and his father attended; and the result of it was not a little surprising to the latter. If it had not been for Dan’s good shooting, the two would have been obliged to return home empty-handed. Godfrey’s great skill with the rifle, of which he so often boasted, was not made apparent on this particular day. He got nothing, but Dan won a prize. He made four centres, but three of them had to be placed against the same number of centres made by other marksmen. When that had been done the boy had still one centre left, and that entitled him to the first choice. Dan was highly elated, and his father was correspondingly enraged.

“The ungrateful rascal,” said Godfrey to himself, “to come here an’ shoot agin’ his poor ole pop what’s done so much fur him, an’ make me take a back seat! I eddicated that boy myself. I larnt him how to handle a rifle, and now I wish I hadn’t done it, kase this is the kind of pay I get fur it. I’ll take mighty good keer that he don’t get no more seventy-five cents to spend at shootin’ matches. It beats all natur’ whar he got that wad of money, an’ if I had another dollar I’d give it to know!”

But Godfrey said nothing. He knew that if he spoke as he felt, it would put Dan on his guard, and that might lead to the derangement of certain plans he had formed. So he laughed at the witty things that were said to him about being beaten by his own son, and when some one complimented Dan on the skill he had exhibited, his father said it might have been expected, for the boy was simply a chip of the old block.

“I’m monstrous proud of ye, Dannie,” said Godfrey, as the two wended their way toward home after the shooting was over; “monstrous proud. It done me good to see them ole fellers look wild when ye made them centres so handy, one arter t’other. I’m a trifle sorry that ye spent yer money so scandalous foolish, but it can’t be helped now. ’Tain’t the way to get rich, Dannie, that ar way aint, an’ I hope ye won’t do it no more.”

This was the way Godfrey talked; but had he acted out his feelings, he would have fallen upon Dan with the cowhide the moment they reached the cabin.

The three miles that lay between the landing and the Evans plantation being accomplished, Godfrey, with the air of a man who had done a day’s work with which he was perfectly satisfied, seated himself on a bench beside the door, preparatory to indulging in a pipeful of the store tobacco which had come into his possession so unexpectedly; while Dan proceeded to the corn-crib behind the house, and harnessed an old and very infirm mule to a rickety wagon, intending to return to the landing and bring home the quarter of beef that had fallen to his lot. He went about his task in that peculiar and indescribable way a boy has of doing things when he has something in view besides the work in hand. His movements were stealthy, and he cast frequent and furtive glances around him, as if he were afraid of being caught in some act that would bring him certain and speedy punishment.

Once or twice he moved quickly to the cabin and looked around the corner, to make sure that his father was still seated where he had left him. He always found him there. He never seemed to have changed his position. He sat with his legs stretched out before him, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, his head bowed, his eyes closed and his beloved pipe tightly clenched between his teeth. He was asleep; and Dan, having made sure of this, quickly returned to the corn-crib and halted under a shed which was built on one side of it. This shed was used to shelter the wagon, the few farming implements Godfrey possessed, and also the harness, which, when not in use, was kept hung up on a wooden pin driven into one of the logs of which the corn-crib was built. Dan came to a stop under this pin, and after looking all around again to make sure that there was no one watching him, he seized it with both hands, and after working it backward and forward a few times, finally pulled it out.

Looking into the hole, as if to satisfy himself that something he had previously placed there was safe, Dan drew a roll of bills out of his pocket, and, after running his eye over them to make sure that they were all there, thrust them into the hole, and with one quick blow with his hand drove the pin back to its place. This done, he jumped into the wagon, picked up the knotted lines, and as he drove around the corner of the cabin, took care to notice his father’s position. Godfrey was still asleep—there could be no doubt about that. His pipe was twisted about in his mouth, until the bowl pointed downward, his head was thrown over on one side, and as Dan looked at him, he told himself that he was disposed of for two long hours, at least. Yet so suspicious was he, that he did not neglect to turn and look at him every now and then as long as he remained in sight of the cabin.

“He’s thar yet, an’ I reckon I’ve fixed things all right,” thought Dan, with a chuckle denoting intense satisfaction. “He’s been kinder snoopin’ around ever since he found out I had that money, an’ I was afeared that mebbe he’d smell out somethin’. He thinks I don’t know it, but I’ve seed him more’n once sarchin’ my pockets arter I went to bed, an’ he thought I was asleep. He was a lookin’ fur gun caps, an’ things he couldn’t buy hisself. I reckon he hain’t made much outen me since I found that hidin’ place fur my money an’ sich plunder. ’Tain’t safe to trust pop no further nor a feller can see him.”

With these sage reflections, Dan drove on toward the landing.

CHAPTER V.
GODFREY FINDS SOMETHING.

WHEN Dan drove around the corner of the cabin, the slumbering Godfrey, without changing his position, opened one of his eyes, but quickly closed it again as Dan turned about in his wagon to look at him. Presently he opened it again, and kept it open until Dan once more turned to look at him; and the farther the wagon left the house behind, the oftener the eye was opened, and the longer it remained open. When the wagon and its driver had disappeared around a bend in the road, Godfrey opened both eyes, straightened up, stretching his arms and yawning as if he had just awakened out of a sound sleep, turned his pipe about in his mouth, and with an expression of great satisfaction on his face, arose and went around the corner of the house toward the corn-crib. He walked straight to the shed that stood beside it, and placing his hand on the same pin that Dan had removed but a few minutes before, pulled it out and looked into the opening.

He was surprised at the size of it. By the aid of a gouge, or some other sharp instrument, the inside of the hole had been cut away until a cavity had been formed that would hold a quart or more; and in this were two or three small packages, done up in brown paper. Godfrey opened his knife and poked them out one by one. The first contained the greenbacks of which he was in search. He counted them over carefully, and was greatly disappointed and surprised to find that the whole amount was only three dollars and twenty-five cents. But even that sum was more than he could often call his own, and his fingers closed tightly about it as if he feared that it might somehow slip away from him and be lost. The other packages contained powder, lead and a box of caps. These were all useful to Godfrey, who put them into the pocket that had the smallest holes in it, and after replacing the pin and driving it into the hole with a blow of his hand, walked away, well satisfied with the discovery he had made.

Dan was not so smart as he thought he was. His father had known for along time that he had a secret hiding place for all the various little odds and ends that came into his hands, and when Dan went to harness the mule, the suspicious glances he cast about and his stealthy actions, made Godfrey believe that he had only to watch him to find out where that hiding place was. There was a convenient opening in the rear wall of the cabin, that had been formed by the “chinking” falling out, and through this hole Godfrey watched all Dan’s movements. As long as Dan remained at the corn-crib, Godfrey kept his eye at the opening; but when the boy came toward the cabin, he left it, and passing quickly across the floor and out at the door, seated himself on the bench and took up the position he had occupied when Dan last saw him. When his son, satisfied with his reconnoissance, went back to the corn-crib, Godfrey again entered the cabin and stationing himself at the hole in the rear wall, saw everything that was done. He was highly delighted with the success of his little stratagem. The money was in his possession now, and besides he had secured ammunition enough to last him a month.

“The amazin’ ongrateful an’ ondutiful chap, to hide things from his poor ole dad in sich a scandalous way as that ar,” said Godfrey, giving his pocket a slap. “He wouldn’t lend it to me to take keer of it fur him, an’ now I’ve got it anyhow. But how came he by it, is what I’d like to know. Don’t stand to reason that Silas Jones give it to him, kase he hain’t been a doin’ no work for Silas—no, I’ll warrant he hain’t. Dan takes arter his pop, and is too much of a gentleman to do anything like work when he can get outen it.”

How Dan came by the money in the first place was a matter that interested and perplexed Godfrey not a little. He seated himself on the bench again, and smoked up two or three pipes of store tobacco while he was thinking about it. But he could come to no conclusion, although he kept his mind busy until the creaking of the wagon wheels announced that Dan was coming back. Then Godfrey had other matters to think of. He expected a stormy scene with his son when the latter discovered that his money had been removed from its hiding place, and he prepared for it by going into the cabin and placing the rawhide where he could find it at a moment’s warning. Then he pushed back his sleeves, seated his remnant of a hat firmly on his head, and seated himself on the bench again to await Dan’s approach.

“Yer mam hain’t come hum yet, Dannie,” said he, when the boy had arrived within speaking distance. “She’s allers away when she’d oughter be here tidyin’ up things, an’ makin’ the house look as though white folks lived here; but we won’t wait fur her. Ye can cook as well as any woman, Dannie, an’ we’ll have some of that fresh meat to onct.”

Dan made no reply in words. He put his hand into his pocket and looked at his father; whereupon the latter arose and glanced into the wagon. It was empty.

“Whar’s the meat?” he demanded, angrily.

“It’s done sold,” was the reply.

For a moment Godfrey acted as if he were about to go off into an awful passion. He spread out his feet, clenched both his hands and began shaking them in the air. Then he jumped up, knocked his heels together, and having thus loosened his joints, was ready for action. Dan saw that the storm was coming, and made all haste to put himself out of the way of its fury, first by jumping out of the wagon on the opposite side, so that he would have a fair chance to run if he found it necessary, and second by trying to appease his father.

“Hain’t that the way to get rich, pop,—by takin’ money every chance ye get?” said he. “I got it an’ I saved it, too. Look a yer,” he added, pulling some bills out of his pocket, and extending them across the wagon toward his father.

Godfrey was mollified at once. The sight of money always made him good-natured, especially if he saw a prospect of handling it himself.

“How much ye got thar?” he asked, in a very different tone of voice.

“Three dollars an’ a half,” replied Dan. “Silas Jones done offered it to me fur my beef, an’ when I axed him whar was the money, he counted it right down. Mebbe I could lend ye another dollar, pop, if ye’ll promise to pay it back.”

Godfrey had in some way collected his wandering wits by this time. He reviewed the situation hastily while Dan was speaking, and greatly to the surprise of the boy, who had never known him to refuse money before, replied:

“No, Dannie, the money is yourn, an’ I wont take it from ye. I’ll have plenty of my own in a week or two—jest as soon as we find that thar bar’l. But, Dannie, I had got my mind all made up fur somethin’ nice, an’ I can’t no ways do without some fresh meat of some kind fur supper; so if ye’ll take yer rifle an’ go right out an’ shoot some squirrels, I’ll say no more about yer sellin’ the meat. I’ll unhitch the critter, too.”

Dan, glad to be let off so easily, and wondering greatly at this unusual display of forbearance on the part of his father, readily agreed to this proposal. But he didn’t quite like the look of things. He had a suspicion that this was simply a ruse on the part of his father, and that when he came out from behind the wagon and entered the cabin to get his rifle, Godfrey would seize him and bring the rawhide into play. Experience had taught him that his father’s word was not always to be depended on, so he was very cautious in his movements. He accompanied the wagon to the corn-crib, waited until his father began to unharness the mule, and then darted into the cabin, secured his rifle and ammunition, and quickly put a ten rail fence between him and his sire. Then he began to breathe easier.

Being left to himself, Godfrey proceeded very leisurely to unharness the mule and detach him from the wagon. Just as the work was about to be completed, he heard the report of his son’s rifle away off in the woods. The sound had a strange effect upon him. His actions seemed to say that he had been waiting for it. Quickly dropping the harness, which he was on the point of hanging in its accustomed place, he seized the wooden pin that concealed the entrance to Dan’s hiding-place, and pulled it out. Then he took the packages from his pocket, one by one, and put them back in the opening just as he had found them—the powder first, the lead next, then the caps, and lastly the money; and when they were all in, he drove the pin back to its place and hung the harness upon it. He seemed to feel relieved after it was done. He drew a long breath, and started for the cabin to solace himself with a pipe, as he always did after he had exerted himself in any unusual degree.

In half an hour the sun began to sink behind the trees on the opposite bank of the river, and then Godfrey’s scattered family began to come in, one after the other. First came his wife, who had been over to see a neighbor with whom she had been on visiting terms in better days. On her arm she carried a basket covered with a snow-white napkin. Godfrey’s eyes glistened at the sight of it. He had seen a good many such baskets carried into his house of late, and he knew that every time they came he and the rest of the family had something good to eat for a day or two.

“Now, Godfrey, if you will chop some wood and start a fire, I’ll get some supper,” said his wife, cheerfully.

The man took his pipe out of his mouth and groaned. Chopping wood was his pet aversion.

“Didn’t used to be so in the good ole days, did it, Susie?” said he, with a long-drawn sigh. “I used to have plenty of niggers to do that ar mean work. Choppin’ wood ain’t gentleman’s work, Susie—no it ain’t!”

“But somebody must do it, Godfrey,” said Mrs. Evans.

“So they must; but I can’t seem to stoop to it, somehow. Here comes Dave. Make him do it.”

“David is tired out, most likely. He’s been tramping through the fields all the afternoon.”

“An’ hain’t I tired out too, I’d like to know?” exclaimed Godfrey. “Here I’ve been an’ hoofed it down to the landin’ an’ worked like a good fellow at that shootin’ match. Whew! It jest makes me ache all over to think of all I’ve been an’ done since dinner. ’Sides, Dave’s got no sort o’ right to go a trampin’ ’round the fields all the arternoon. He’d oughter be to hum straightenin’ up things. But it won’t be so long—not longer nor next week, nohow—kase that thar bar’l will——”

“Now, Godfrey!” interrupted Mrs. Evans.

“Now, ole woman!” retorted Godfrey.

“I knew you didn’t mean what you said to-day at the dinner table,” said his wife, “and I wish you wouldn’t talk so before the boys.”

“About that thar bar’l, with the eighty thousand dollars into it? I did mean it, an’ I tell ye I will talk so, too!”

“Then it is high time somebody was taking charge of your children. David may be able to resist such temptations, but I don’t want to have him put to the test. You will certainly have a bad influence over Dan, for you will make him dishonest.”

The mere mention of that word seemed to irritate Godfrey. He jumped up from the bench, spread out his feet, and taking his pipe from his mouth with one hand, extended the other toward his wife.

“Now, ole woman, jest look at ye!” he began; and then he bounded into the air, knocked his heels together, and came down on his feet again with a jar that must have shaken him all over. “An’ now jest look at me!”

“I was talking with Mrs. Gordon about it not more than an hour ago,” said Mrs. Evans, not at all alarmed by her husband’s words or actions. “She says the general wants to do something for David, and will use his influence to put him where he can make a man of himself. He has aspirations, and I believe will be of some use in the world if he ever has the chance.”

Godfrey put his pipe back into his mouth and sat down again.

“What did you say them things is that Dave’s got?” he asked.

“Aspirations,” replied Mrs. Evans.

“What’s them, an’ whar did he get ’em?” inquired Godfrey, who thought they might be something of value which David carried in his pockets, and which might be stolen after the boy had gone to bed.

“I mean that he doesn’t want to live in this way all his life. He wants to do and be something better.”

“Oh!” said Godfrey, somewhat disappointed. “Wal, I can take keer of him, an’ without no help from the gen’ral, who can jest watch his own boys an’ let mine be. That bar’l will fix things all right!”

Mrs. Evans, seeing that nothing was to be gained by talking to her husband, passed on into the cabin; and just then David came up. He carried his old single-barrel shot gun over his shoulder, a bunch of quails in his hand, and Don Gordon’s pointer followed close at his heels, his appearance indicating that he had been doing some work since he left the cabin.

“Wal, sonny,” said Godfrey, “how does the pup understand his business?”

“O, it will be no trouble at all to break him,” answered David. “He understands some things as well as an old dog already.”

“I’m glad to hear ye say so, an’ I’m glad to see ye’ve done so well,” said Godfrey, glancing at the bunch of quails. “Ye’re getting to be a right smart hunter. Ye can make a good livin’ at it some day, if ye want to.”

“But I don’t want to,” said David quickly. “I can make a better living at something else, and take care of my mother, too.”

“That’s right, sonny. Allers think of yer mam, what’s done so much fur ye; an’ of yer pop, too. He’s worked monstrous hard to edicate ye an’ keep a roof over yer head, yer pop has, an’ ye’d oughter to begin to pay him back purty soon. Now, put away yer gun an’ go an’ chop some wood fur yer mam to cook supper by. She’s tired, an’ so be I. We’ve worked powerful hard this arternoon, we have, while ye’ve been trampin’ about enjoyin’ yerself.”

Godfrey settled back on the bench and gave his undivided attention to his pipe for a few seconds and then suddenly arose and entered the cabin. He had counted the moments of Dan’s absence pretty closely and knew about what time to look for his return. He knew, too, what the boy would do first when he came back, and wanted to be where he could watch all his movements. He applied his eye to the hole in the wall where the chinking had fallen out, and was just in time to see Dan climb the fence that separated the woods from the little clearing in which the cabin stood, and make his way towards the corn-crib. When he reached it he paused long enough to make sure that there was no one in sight, and then quickly took the harness down from its place, and pulled out the pin. A hasty glance at the interior of his hiding place, satisfied him that everything was just as he had left it; and this being settled he pulled something out of his pocket, pushed it into the opening, replaced the pin, and hung up the harness, just as David, with an axe on his shoulder, came whistling around the corner of the cabin.

Having seen all he wanted to see, Godfrey quickly crossed the cabin and seating himself on the bench pulled vigorously at his pipe.

“Fur downright Yankee ’cuteness an’ smartness I jist think I lay over ’most anybody,” thought he, giving his knee an approving slap. “I’m jist three dollars an’ a half ahead of what I would have been, if I had kept that money when I had it. When Dan told me that he’d done sold that beef, I knowed what he’d do with the money, an’ that’s why I sent him into the woods arter them squirrels. It give me time to fix things in that hole jist as I found ’em, an’ now Dan’s done gone an’ put that three an’ a half in there too, which makes me a’most seven dollars ahead of the hounds, if I counted it up on my fingers right, an’ I reckon I did. I hain’t agoin’ to hunt fur that bar’l to-night, kase when Dan goes to sleep I want to slip out thar an’ get that money, afore he has a chance to take it out an’ put it sowewhar else!”

At this moment Dan came around the corner of the cabin, with a string of squirrels thrown over his shoulder. There were eight of them altogether and he held them up so that his father could see that every one of them was shot through the head. Godfrey complimented him on his skill, and when the boy passed into the cabin became suddenly silent and thoughtful. A question had just occurred to him. What if Dan had spent some of the money at the landing before he came home? He could not breathe freely until he found out.

“Dannie,” said he, as the boy, having put away his rifle, came out again and seated himself on a log near the cabin preparatory to skinning the squirrels he had shot, “ye told me ye’d got——how much fur that quarter of beef?”