P. “Let go? No! I tell ye I didn’t; the hog got hold of his heel, and bit the ball right off; but when he let go _that_ time, I fetched a dreadful lift, and I got him over the pen, _safe and sound, only_ he was badly bit.
“And while I think of it, one day Mistress took me to go with her through the Cedar Swamp to see some Satan, only she took me as she said to keep the snakes off. It was two miles through the woods, and we went on a road of cedar-rails, and when we got into the swamp, I see a big old-fashioned cat owl a settin’ on a limb up ’bout fifteen foot from the ground I guess; and as I’d heard an owl couldn’t see in the day time, I thought I’d creep up slily, and catch him, and I says ‘Mistress,’ says I, ‘will you wait?’ and she says, ‘yis, if you’ll be quick.’ And so up I got, and jist as I was agoin to grab him, he jumped down, and lit on my head, and planted his big claws in my wool and begun to peck, and I hollered like a loon, and swung off, and down I come, and he stuck tight and pecked worse than ever. I hollows for Mistress, and by this time she comes up with a club, and she pounded the old feller, but he wouldn’t git off, and she pounded him till he was dead; and his claws stuck so tight in my wool, Mistress had to cut ’em out with my jack-knife, and up I got, glad ’nough to git off as I did; and I crawled out of the mud, and the blood come a runnin’ down my head, and I was clawed and pecked like a good feller, but I didn’t go owlin’ agin very soon, I tell ye.”
“Well, we got there, and this was Saturday, and we stayed till the next arternoon. Sunday mornin’ I see a man go by, towards our house, with an axe on his shoulder; and we started in the arternoon, and when we’d got into the middle of the swamp there lay that man _dead_, with two big wild cats by him that he’d killed: he’d split one on ’em open in the head, and the axe lay buried in the neck of t’other; and there they all lay dead together, all covered with blood, and sich a pitiful sight I hain’t seen. But oh! how thick the wild cats was in that swamp, and you could hear ’em squall in the night, as thick as frogs in the spring; but ginerally they kept pretty still in the day time, and so we didn’t think there was any danger till now; and we had to leave the dead man there alone, only the dead wild cats was with him, and make tracks as fast as we cleverly could, for home.”