This very satisfactory explanation brought us to our ground, and we were soon at our respective stands and listening eagerly for the trail-notes of the old hounds.  The deer have regular runs, from which they rarely deviate, and which do not vary in the course of years.  These are guarded by the standers while the game is driven down from the opposite direction.  A large drive may have a dozen of these stands, by one of which the deer will almost certainly pass, but which one nobody knows.  Quiet is absolutely necessary and a cigar is fatal to sport, but concealment is useless, as these animals see imperfectly in daylight.

I had not to wait long before I caught the distant cheering and hand-clapping of the drivers as they encouraged the dogs to hunt.  In the quiet of the sombre woods every sound was distinctly audible.  Suddenly three or four quick, sharp yelps brought my gun to the “ready,” and the hammers clicked as a burst of music followed.  But above the clamor of the hounds came the crack of the driver’s whip, and his voice, mellowed by distance, was heard in angry tones:  “Come back yah, you good-for-nuttin’, wutless lee’ rabbit-dog, you!  I sway maussa ha’ for shoot da’ puppy ’fore he spile ebery dog in de pack!”

Soon, however, came another open, deep and musical, and there was no mistaking old Drummer’s trail-note:  then Killbuck joined in, and then the cry became general.  For a while the broken, quavering tongue tells that the dogs are only trailing and the deer is still cowering in his bed, or perhaps has sneaked out of the drive at the first sound of the horn.  Hark! what a burst!  They had “started” within two hundred yards of me.  The next moment there was a rustle of leaves, and a yearling doe dashed by.  I am not a dead shot, and have nothing to say about that first barrel, but the second sent her down and over with a roll that almost broke her neck.  The dogs were stopped and the deer thrown over the pommel of one of the boys, and we rode on to try the Brunswick swamp.  The boy had assured us that “One pow’ful big buck bin in day (there) las’ night.  I see all he track gwine in, an’ I nebber see none come out.”

We were soon strung along the narrow dam across which the game was to be forced by the drivers, who had to make their way through an ugly bog among cypress “knees” and dense brier-patches.  Jack Parker stood next to me, fidgeting about uneasily, because it was against rules to talk on stand.  Jack’s prominent feature was his nose, and he had an incorrigible trick of blowing it “out loud” whenever there was a particular reason for keeping perfectly quiet.  The dogs had begun to open, and their loose, scattering trail-notes indicated turkeys.  Looking directly before me, I saw seven noble gobblers stepping cautiously toward my stand.  Their glossy breasts glittered with coppery lustre in the straggling sunbeams as, with drooping wings and expanded tails, they advanced, looking fearfully