308 MEN 1 HAVE FISHED WITH. 



not lengthwise, as it would have been done when the deer 

 was on the run. Take it; I only spoke in that way be- 

 cause of your claiming the hide so promptly." 



"Now, see here," said Bill, "I don't want that hide. 

 I ain't no hog! All I thought of was that I didn't miss 

 that deer slick and clean as I did the other one, and I 

 wanted you to know it. I'll tell you what we'll do; let's 

 give a quarter of the deer and the hide to old John Jami- 

 son, who has been sick all winter an' hasn't earned a dol- 

 lar; send a quarter to that widow up there on the British 

 Hollow road; I forget her name, but her husband died 

 before you got back from the North. Then we'll keep 

 the rest, and if Old Poppy Knight would like a steak 

 no, I'll feed it to Charley Guyon's 'coon dog first. Say, 

 I wouldn't let that old pelican have a smell of it. No, 

 sir, not by a mill privilege." 



His charitable proposition was carried out; we had 

 our hunt and all the meat we needed. It's not hard to 

 give away what you don't need; the difficulty often oc- 

 curs in deciding what it is that you don't need when your 

 neighbor is destitute, and is in desperate need of things 

 which you don't here I get off the track, and go to 

 moralizing over what struck me as a good streak in the 

 nature of Bill Patterson, who took good care that no one 

 should discover that he had what he would have con- 

 sidered a weak spot. He would have fought me for that 

 deer skin, but you see how it went. 



February had come, and Henry Neaville's feet had 

 got over their October freeze. He drifted into my house 

 one day on a south wind when Bill was profanely reciting 

 his adventures in Sonora and New Mexico, and said: 

 "There's a lot of fish in a pond hole down by the river, 

 and they're all a-crowding up to a little spring that keeps 

 an open place and gives 'em air. There's a lot o' bass, 



