36 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH. 



" Poke, Poke, they are coming — some one is coming." 



" "Where — where ! Oh, dear, I can't turn my head, lest I slip 

 off." 



" There they come ; I see them — three torches, and men and 

 dogs." 



* God bless them ! " I heard Poke say faintly. 



I was afraid he was fainting. " Hold on, Poke," I said, and 

 screaming to the men, I called them to hurry. On they came, at 

 a run. I recognised them as they came up with their torches 

 flashing through the woods ; they were Jackson and his men. He 

 had been in our camp only the day previous, and told us he had 

 a sheep farm in this neighbourhood. "Quick, this way," I 

 shouted— "the wolves! the wolves!" He answered me. How 

 blessed a thing was the sound of a human voice in our necessity ! 

 They came under the tree we were in. 



" Hulloa there ! where are you ? where are the wolves ? " he 

 shouted in his stentorian tones. 



"Dare's de sheep I's bin huntin' all dis bressed night," 

 exclaimed a negro who accompanied Jackson on his search. 



I looked around, and there was Jackson's flock of sheep, 

 staring blandly at us up in the trees, and at their master, by turn. 

 It had been their eyes we had seen in the darkness. 



And there was Jackson see-sawing on a fallen tree — hiccough- 

 ing, and laughing and crying by turns — and there were the negroes, 

 and they called in the sheep, " Ho ! ho ! ho ! Oh laws a maussy, 

 did I ever — ho ! ho ! ho ! ho ! — wolves, oh laws a maussy ! " 



Poke slid down the tree he was in, picking up his coat-tail, 

 that had been torn off by a broken limb in his hurried ascent, 

 sighing : 



" O that I had the wings of a dove ! " 



