wit than his master, I guess he'd had his wind-pipe
stopped as tight as a bladder. There is an outlaw of a
feller here, for all the world like one of our Kentucky
Squatters, one Bill Smith--a critter that neither fears
man nor devil. Sheriff and constable can make no hand of
him--they can't catch him no how; and if they do come up
with him, he slips through their fingers like an eel:
and then, he goes armed, and he can knock the eye out of
a squirrel with a ball, at fifty yards hand running--a
regular ugly customer. Well, Nabb, the constable, had a
writ agin him, and he was cyphering a good while how he
should catch him; at last he hit on a plan that he thought
was pretty clever, and he scheemed for a chance to try
it. So one day he heard that Bill was up at Pugnose's
Inn, a settling some business, and was likely to be there
all night. Nabb waits till it was considerable late in
the evening, and then he takes his horse and rides down
to the inn, and hitches his beast behind the hay stack.
Then he crawls up to the window and peeps in, and watches
there till Bill should go to bed, thinking the best way
to catch them are sort of animals is to catch them asleep.
Well, he kept Nabb a waiting outside so long, with his
talking and singing, that he well nigh fell asleep fist
himself; at last Bill began to strip for bed. First he
takes out a long pocket pistol, examines the priming,
and lays it down on the table, near the head of the bed.

When Nabb sees this, he begins to creep like all over,
and feel kinder ugly, and rather sick of his job; but
when he seed him jump into bed, and heerd him snore out