But my story is only half told.

* * * * *

An old adage says, “It is a poor rule that won’t work both ways;” and so thought Jacob.  He resolved in the morning, that if the creatures should come back the next night, as they would be quite apt to do, he would turn the tables and try to teach them the pleasure of being imprisoned in a pig-sty.

Anybody who has lived in a region infested by carnivorous animals, knows how they prowl around the settler’s cabin the night after any fat animal, cattle or swine is killed, for the meat.  They snuff the blood from afar in the forest, and hasten to the place to have a tooth, or a paw, in the division of the spoils.  Knowing this peculiarity of panthers, Jacob and Polly held a consultation, and as it was about time in the autumn to make pork of the pigs, they decided to perform that work during the day.  The scent of blood would serve as a double inducement for his visitors to return.

So, in the afternoon, the task was done, the pen and vicinity being the scene of the slaughter, and all the bloody tidbits placed inside the door.  Every such thing was arranged to attract the animals into the sty if possible.  The meat was placed safely in the garret of the house.

The door of the pen was so constructed as to open and shut something like the lower sash of a window, by sliding up and down, a peg holding it open by day and closed by night.  When the door was open, this peg had only to be pulled out, to let it shut down like a flash; and being shut no animal could open it.  Jacob went along the brook and obtained a quantity of bark from the moosewood, (Dirca palustris,) of which he made a strong cord, long enough to reach from the pen to the house.  One end of this he tied tightly to the peg that supported the door, and the other he made fast inside the house.

When night came, he was ready for visitors.

Stationing themselves at the window, he and Polly watched and listened.

Hardly had it become dark, when they heard the mewing of the panthers at no great distance in the forest.  Persons who are familiar only with the mewing of cats, have little idea how a panther’s stronger, but similar voice will ring through the woods.

In a little time they distinctly heard one of them leap upon the pen and begin scratching as the night before; and in a moment more, by the confined sound of purring and growling, it was evident they had entered the sty and were disputing over the morsels of meat.

Then Jacob gave the bark cord a vigorous jerk and they heard the door drop.

I suppose it would be impossible to describe the excitement of Polly and Jacob at this moment, but the girls and boys can imagine something of it.

They did not dare to go out to see if they had caught the panthers, lest, having failed, the panthers might catch them.

Before morning, however, they were sure enough that one or more was captured, for there was a great deal of smothered howling, just as it would sound from animals shut in a pen.