Don't open your eyes, Polder! You think I am going to tell you about
some of my Minnesota experiences; how I used to scamper over the
prairies on my Indian pony, and lie in wait for wild turkeys on the
edge of an oak opening. That is pretty sport, too, to creep under an
oak with low-hanging boughs, and in the silence of a glowing
autumn-day linger by the hour together in a trance of warm stillness,
watching the light tracery of shadow and sun on that smooth sward,
only now and then roused by the fleet rush of a deer through the wood,
or the brisk chatter of a plume-tailed squirrel, till one hears a
distant, sharp, clucking chuckle, and in an instant more pulls the
trigger, and upsets a grand old cock, every bronzed feather glittering
in the sunshine, and now splashed with scarlet blood, the delicate
underwing ground into down as he rolls and flutters; for the first
shot rarely kills at once with an amateur; there's too much
excitement. Splendid sport, that! but I'm not going into it
second-hand. I promised to tell you a story, now the skipper's fast,
and the night is too warm to think of sleep down in that wretched
bunk;--what another torture Dante might have lavished on his Inferno,
if he'd ever slept in a fishing-smack! No. The moonlight makes me
sentimental! Did I ever tell you about a month I spent up in
Centreville, the year I came home from Germany? That was
turkey-hunting with a vengeance!

You see, my pretty cousin Peggy married Peter Smith, who owns
paper-mills in Centreville, and has exiled herself into deep country
for life; a circumstance I disapprove, because I like Peggy, and
manufacturers always bore me, though Peter is a clever fellow enough;
but madam was an old flame of mine, and I have a lingering tenderness
for her yet. I wish she was nearer town. Just that year Peggy had
been very ill indeed, and Kate, her sister, had gone up to nurse