beside her.  Pooty soon she see that he wor a-looking at her; and pooty soon he began to make a purring sort of noise, like ’bout forty big tomcats tied up in one bag.  Then Harnah spoke to him, like as she’d have coaxed a dog, and, arter a while, began to play with the cubs a little.  One way and another, they’d got to be ‘mazin’ good friends all raound, when a cry was heerd outside; and the old man and the little ones pricked up their ears, and yowled in answer.  It wor the old woman coming home, sure enough; and the minute she poked her snout inter the den, and see what company her man had got while she wor gone, the trouble begun.  Harnah, naterally, wor too much skeered to see justly what went on:  but there were a big fight somehow; and she got a notion that the she-painter wanted to fall afoul uv her, and that he wouldn’t let her; and, like other married folks, from words they come to blows; and the upshot uv the hull was, that the old lady got the wust on’t, and lay dead on the field uv action.

“Whether the husband felt bad, or whether he wanted sunthin’ to eat, or whether he had an engagement with another lady, I couldn’t say; but, the minute he’d given the finishing blow to his wife, he cleared out, and didn’t come back till the cubs called him to see to me.

“Well, we got Harnah home somehow; and next day we come again, and skun the old tiger and the cubs; and I got a hull heap o’ harebells.  I was bound, that, after all the fuss, Harnah shouldn’t lose her harebells; and she didn’t.”

Seth was silent; and, tilting his chair a little farther back, crossed his hands above his chest, and began to whistle softly.  The company looked at him inquiringly; and, after a pause, Karl asked,—­

“Well, what next, Seth?”

“Nothing, cap’n:  that’s all; except I didn’t tell how Sam see me going up the river, and suspicioned I wor a going to meet Harnah, and so dropped all, and followed on.  What he brought his gun fer, I didn’t never ask him.”

“But Hannah-what became of her?”

“Oh! she was kind o’ peeked a while, with her broken leg; but, arter that, she was as well as ever.”

“Yes; but how did her love-affairs terminate?” persisted Karl.

“Waal, she married Sam Hedge the next fall; and I guess their love-affairs turned out like other folkses a good deal,—­lots o’ ‘lasses at fust, and, arter a while, lots o’ vinegar:  that’s the way o’ married life.”

In delivering this sentiment, Seth bestowed a sidelong glance upon Mehitable, far more merry than sincere in its expression; but she, tranquilly pursuing her knitting, let fall her retort, as if she had not perceived the sarcasm.

“Oh, waal!” said she, “I don’t know as I’ve any call to find fault with merried life.  Seth’s made as good a husband as a gal has a right to expect that takes a feller out o’ pity ’cause he’s been mittened by another gal.”

The laugh remained upon the feminine side of the argument, and the party merrily separated for the night.