“We looked to our rifles and at one another, and it may well be that our hats sat somewhat loosely upon our heads, from an involuntary rising of the hair.  ‘What, in the name of all that is mysterious,’ cried my friend, in amazement, ‘is that?’ ‘It is more than I know,’ I replied, as I placed a fresh cap on my rifle.  After a few minutes, the sounds were repeated, and the hills seemed to groan with affright as they sent them back in wavy and quavering echoes from their rugged sides.

“‘We must understand this,’ said my friend, as he led the way with a cautious and stealthy movement towards the depths of the hollow, whence the sounds came, and there, by the stream, on a little sand-bar, stood old Sangamo’s donkey, by the side of a deer.  Old Sangamo himself was stretched at full length on the bank, fast asleep.  How he could have slept on, with such an infernal roaring as that donkey made in those old woods, six or eight miles outside of a fence, is more than I can comprehend.  But he did sleep through it all, and was wakened only by a punch in the ribs with the butt of my rifle, instigated by pity for the poor donkey that was being eaten up by the flies.  We helped him to load the carcass of the deer on the back of his donkey, and saw him move off lazily towards home.  I have heard a good many strange noises in my day, but never, on any other occasion, have I listened to anything to be at all compared with the noise made by the braying of old Sangamo’s donkey in the Chataugay woods.”

As the Doctor concluded his story, the sharp crack of Spalding’s rifle broke the stillness of the night, and went reverberating among the hills, and dying away over the lake.  It was but a short distance from our camp, in a little bay hidden away around a wooded promontory below us.  In a few minutes, the light was seen, rounding the point that hid the bay from our view, and, as the boat landed in front of our tents, Spalding and Martin lifted from it a fine two year old deer, shot directly between the eyes.

[Illustration:  How he could have slept on, with such an infernal roaring as that donkey made in those old woods, six or eight miles outside of a fence, is more than I can comprehend.—­]

“There,” said Spalding, “is the biggest, or what was the biggest fool of a deer in these woods.  Do you believe that he stood perfectly still, gazing in stupid astonishment at our light, until we were within a dozen feet of him, when I dropped him with that ball between the eyes?”

“No,” replied Smith, “I really don’t believe any such thing.”

“It is true, notwithstanding your lack of faith,” said Spalding.

“Do you say that as counsel, or as a gentleman?” inquired Smith.

“Look you, Mr. Smith,” said Spalding, “you are drawing a distinction not warranted by the authority of the books—­as if a lawyer could not tell the truth like a gentleman.  I say it as both.”

“Very well,” remarked Smith, “then I must believe it, of course.  But understand, Hank Martin, it will be my turn to-morrow night.”  And so the matter was settled that the next night hunting was to be done by Smith.