150 A COLLISION. 



back and of a strong constitution, could clean some twenty 

 bushels in a single day). While stooping over to fill his 

 fan with unwinnowed grain, the buck, taking advantage of 

 his position, came like a catapult against him, and sent him 

 like a ball from a Paixhan gun, head foremost into the 

 chaff. Great was the astonishment, but greater the wrath 

 of Pompey, and dire the vengeance that he denounced 

 against his assailant. Gathering himself up, and rubbing 

 the part battered by the attack of his enemy, he retreated 

 around the corner of the barn, and procuring a rock weigh- 

 ing some twenty pounds, returned to the presence of his' foe, 

 who was quietly eating the wheat that the negro had been 

 cleaning, evidently regarding it as the legitimate spoils of 

 victory. Getting down on all fours, and managing to hold 

 the stone against his head, Pompey challenged his enemy to 

 combat. The buck, nothing loth, drew back to a proper 

 distance, and shutting both eyes, came like a battering rain 

 against the stone on the other side of which was the negro's 

 head. As might have been expected, the challenger went 

 one way, and the challenged the other by the recoil, botli 

 knocked into insensibility by the concussion. Pompey was 

 taken up for dead, but his wool and the thickness of his 

 scull saved him. He gave the buck a wide berth after that. 

 He regarded him always with a sort of superstitious awe, 

 never being able to comprehend how he butted him through 

 -ihat big stone. Explain the matter to him ever so scientifi- 

 cally, demonstrate it on the clearest principles of mechanical 



