* * * * *

“We’re going a-huntin’ to-day, Johnny,—­wan’ ter come along?”

“Sure!”

“Wall, git ready, then!”

But first Paul fed the hounds out in the yard ... huge slabs of white bread spread generously with lard.  This was all they ever got, except the scraps from the table, which were few.  They made a loud, slathering noise, gulping and bolting their food.

* * * * *

But we started off without the hounds.

“Ain’t you going to take the dogs along?”

“Nope.”

“Why not—­ain’t we going to hunt rabbits?”

“Yep.”

“Then why not take them?”

“Put your hand in my right hand pocket an’ find out!”

I stuck my hand down, and it was given a vicious bite by a white, pink-eyed ferret Paul was carrying there.  I yelled with pain and surprise.  I pulled my hand up in the air, the ferret hanging to a finger.  The ferret dropped to the ground.  Paul stooped and picked it up, guffawing.  It didn’t bite him.  It knew and feared him.  That was his idea of a joke, the trick he played on me!

“Yew might git blood-pisen from that bite!” teased Josh, to scare me.  But I remained unscared.  I sucked the blood from the tiny punctures, feeling secure, after I had done it.  I remembered how Queen Eleanore had saved the life of Richard Coeur de Lion in the Holy Land, when he had been bitten by an adder, by sucking out the venom.  I enjoyed the thrill of a repeated historic act.

“If we got ketched we’d be put in jail fer this!” remarked Josh with that sly, slow smile of his; “it ain’t the proper season to hunt rabbits in, an’ it’s agin the law, in season or out, to hunt ’em with ferrets,” and he chuckled with relish over the outlawry of it.

We came to a hole under a hollow tree.  Paul let the ferret go down, giving him a preliminary smack.

“Mind you, Jim,—­God damn you,—­don’t you stay down that hole too long.”

“Think he understands you?”

“In course he does:  jest the same es you do.”

“And why would Jim stay down?”

“He might corner the rabbit, kill him, an’ stay to suck his blood ... but Jim knows me ...  I’ve given him many’s the ungodly whipping for playing me that trick ... but he’s always so greedy and hongry that sometimes the little beggar fergits.”

“And then how do you get him out again?”

“Jest set an’ wait till he comes out ... which he must do, sometime ... an’ then you kin jest bet I give it to him.”

We waited a long time.

“Damn Jim, he’s up to his old tricks again, I’ll bet,” swore Josh, shifting his face-deforming quid of tobacco from one protuberant cheek to the other, meditatively....

The ferret appeared, or, rather, a big grey rabbit ... squealing with terror ... coming up backward ... the ferret clinging angrily to his nose ... and tugging like a playing pup.