56 WHIP AND SPUR. 



that my pot (for which alone I have been said to 

 hunt) was better filled by reason of his intelli- 

 gence in the field, and because he would allow 

 one to shoot from the saddle. The birds never 

 mistook me for a sportsman until I was quite 

 in among them, blazing away. 



In coming home from the prairie, we generally 

 rode round by the way of a certain sunken garden 

 that stood a couple of feet below the level of the 

 road. A five-foot picket-fence that stood at the 

 roadside had fallen over toward the garden, so 

 that its top was hardly four feet higher than the 

 road. This made the most satisfactory leap we 

 ever took, — the long, sailing descent, and the 

 safe landing on sandy loam, satisfied so com- 

 pletely one's prudent love of danger. 



I think I missed this leap more than anything 

 at Lebanon when, finally, we set out for Arkansas. 



We made our first considerable halt early in 

 May, at Batesville, on the White River, — a lovely, 

 rose-grown village, carrying, in the neatly kept 

 home of its New England secessionists, evidence 

 that they remembered their native land, where, in 



