304 HILLS AND LAKES. 



found an old log, rotten like on the outside, such as 

 he'd hear'n tell was the right thing, and he bored it 

 full of holes, and put in his salt. That isn't a bad 

 way, Squire, to make a deerlick, for if the deer find 

 it, as they'll be pretty sure to do if there's many about, 

 they'd work at the salt till they've eat up half the log. 

 The next Sunday Gabe visited his_ lick, and sure 

 enough the wood was all gnawed away round the 

 auger-holes, and he reckoned he'd have a tall time with 

 the deer that had done it. So he built him a blind, 

 cute as anything, and got things ready to make a gen- 

 eral smash of all the game in them parts. He put 

 more salt on the logs, and bored new holes, and filled 

 'em, and when he came back he told about seein' 

 deers' tracks ae big as two-year-olds. 



" The man he lived with had an old Queen Anne's 

 piece, long as a liberty-pole, with a bore you could 

 stick your .fist in. It had been through two or three 

 wars, to say nothing about scrimmages with the In- 

 gens. 'Twas old and rusty enough to draw a pension, 

 and hadn't spoke, may be, since the last war. It 

 hung up on pegs in the farmer's stoop, and had hung 

 there ever since he'd been in them parts. The old 

 man that owned it, kept it, as he said, as a kind of 



