“The mornin’ I was to leave I was up early, lookin’ out of my window, when what should I see with these mortial eyes but a gre’t bull moose, as big as two yoke o’ oxen, comin’ along toward the house.  He sort o’ staggered along, and then give a gre’t sigh I could hear from my room—­I was on the ground floor—­fell down on his knees, and laid his head on the ground ’s if he was too beat out to go another step.  Wa’al, sir, I never waited not long enough even to fetch a holler to wake the folks I just dove out o’ the window, and made for him as fast as I could lick in.  As I went by the wood-pile, I grabbed up a big stick of wood——­”

“What kind of wood?” everybody asked in chorus.

“’Twas a big stick of birch-wood, with the white bark on it as clean as writin’-paper.  I grabbed that up for a club—­’twas the only thing in sight—­and when I got to the moose I hit him a clip on the side of the head as hard as I could lay on.  He didn’t so much as open an eye, but I saw he was still breathing and I climbed up on his back so’s to get a good whack at the top of his head.  And then, sir, by Jupiter! he riz right up like a earthquake under me, and started off at forty miles an hour.  He throwed his head back as he run, and ketched me right between his horns, like a nut in a nutcracker.  I couldn’t have got out of them horns—­no, sir, a charge of powder couldn’t scarcely have loosened me.”

There was another pause at this place for the outcries of astonishment and marvel which were never lacking.  Then Jed went on, mumbling his toothless gums in delight over his importance.

“Wa’al, sir, I dassent tell ye how long we careered around them woods and pastures, for, after a while, he got so plumb crazy that he run right out into the open country.  I’d hit him a whack over the head with my stick of wood every chanst I got and he was awful weak anyhow, so he’d kind o’ stagger whenever he made a sharp turn.  By an’ by we got to goin’ toward town.  Somehow he’d landed himself in the road; an’, sir, we rid up to the hotel like a coach and four, and he drapped dead in front of the steps, me stickin’ as fast between his horns as if I’d ‘a’ growed to him.  Yes, sir, they ackchally had to saw one of them horns off’n his head before they got me out.”

He came to a full stop here, but this was not the end.

“What became of the horns, Jed?  Why didn’t ye bring ’em along?”

“I did take the one they sawed off, to give to my partner, big Sam Harden.  He was the biggest man I ever see, Sam Harden was.  I left th’ other horn in Kennettown for the captain’s sister.  She was as smart an’ handsome a widow-woman as ever I see, an’ I wanted for her to have a keepsake from me.”

This was really the end.  The circle of inquisitors left their unconscious victim nodding and grinning to himself, and went on down the road.  Grandfather said he still felt mean all over to remember how they laughed among themselves, and how they pointed out to the stranger the high lights in the story.