Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains

e, doing my best to think how I could best pay off the black termagant with safety to myself, when with great good luck I suddenly beheld a huge hornet's nest, hanging in a bunch of shrubbery. My plan instantly and fully developed. Quickly I returned to the house and hastily gathered what little clothing I owned into a bundle, done up in my one handkerchief, an imitation of bandanna, of very loud pattern. This bundle I secreted in the barn and then hied me to the hornet's nest. Approaching the swinging home of the hornets very softly, so as not to disturb the inmates, I stuffed the entrance to the hornet castle with sassafras leaves, and taking the great sphere in my arms I bore it to a back window of the kitchen where the black beldame was vigorously at work within and contentedly droning a negro hymn.

Dark was coming on and a drizzly rain was falling. It was the spring of the year, the day had been warm and the kitchen window was open. I stole up to the open window. The woman's back was toward me. I remo