see. 'Way up in the lead was Booth Montague and the bloodhounds, and
away aft I could hear Jonadab yelling: "Stop thief!"

'Twas lively while it lasted, but it didn't last long. There was a
little hill at the end of the field, and where the poet dove over
'tother side of it the bloodhounds all but had him. Afore I got to the
top of the rise I heard the awfullest powwow going on in the holler, and
thinks I: "THEY'RE EATING HIM ALIVE!"

But they wan't. When I hove in sight Montague was setting up on the
ground at the foot of the sand bank he'd fell into, and the two hounds
was rolling over him, lapping his face and going on as if he was their
grandpa jest home from sea with his wages in his pocket. And round them,
in a double ring, was all the town dogs, crazy mad, and barking and
snarling, but scared to go any closer.

In a minute more the folks begun to arrive; boys first, then girls and
men, and then the women. Marks came trotting up, pounding the donkey
with his umbrella.

"Here, Lion! Here, Tige!" he yells. "Quit it! Let him alone!" Then he
looks at Montague, and his jaw kind of drops.

"Why--why, HANK!" he says.

A tall, lean critter, in a black tail coat and a yaller vest and
lavender pants, comes puffing up. He was the manager, we found out
afterward.

"Have they bit him?" says he. Then he done just the same as Marks;