all the way out, like a bad dream.  It was a bag-fox day, I believe:  that is, the hunt was provided with a trapped animal, brought upon the ground in a sack and let out when the proper time came,—­a process known in sporting parlance as “shaking a fox.”  The usual amount of “law” having been conceded, the hounds were laid on, and went away, as Button said, like a fire-flake over a prairie.  No sooner did “The Buffer” hear the cry of the pack, than he started forward with a suddenness and force by which his wretched rider was jerked back at least a foot behind the saddle, into which place of rest he never once again fell during his many vicissitudes of position in that ride.  I have said that Button was bow-legged; and to that providential fact did he attribute the power by which he clung on to various parts of the steed during his wild career of perhaps a mile, but which seemed to the troubled senses of the rider not much less than fifty.  It was providential for him, too, that the country was but sparsely intersected by fences, and those not of a very formidable character:  nevertheless, at each of these the too confiding Button experienced a change of position, being, as he used to express it, “interjuiced forrard o’ the saddle or back’ard o’ the saddle, accordin’ to the kind o’ thing the hoss flew over, and one time booleyvusted right under the hoss, whar he hung on by the girth ontil another buck-jump sent him right side on ag’in; but never, on no account, did he touch leather ag’in in all that ride.”  And thus Billy Button might have ridden farther and fared worse, had he not seen a terrible fate staring him imminently in the face.  The hounds had just entered a little grove of young pine-trees, which stood very close together, and bristled with sharp, jagged branches nearly to the root, after the manner of these children of the wood.  At this place of torture “The Buffer” was rushing with all his might, Button being then situated upon his neck, in a position most convenient for being “skinned alive” by the trees, as he said, when a plunge made by the animal over a plashy pool transferred the rider to his tail, from which he “collapsed right down in a kind o’ swoon, and when he come to, found himself settin’ up to his elbows in muddy water, very solitary-like, and with a terrible stillness all around.”—­What became of “The Buffer” I forget, and also how Button got home; but he certainly did not ride.  And he always wound up the narrative of his first and last fox-hunt by invoking terrible ends to himself, if ever he “threw leg over dog-hoss ag’in, to see a throw-off.”

Button left Lorette about two years after I first became acquainted with him, and I next heard of him down at the rock-walled Saguenay, where he had gone into a speculation for supplying the Boston market with salmon.  But horse-flesh seemed to be more palatable to him than fish; for, later still, I met him at Toronto, in Upper Canada, mounted upon a powerful dark brown stallion, and leading another, its exact counterpart.