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green razberries; and the green blackberries was just beginning to show.

They would all come handy by-and-by, I judged.

Well, I went fooling along in the deep woods till I judged I warn't far from

the foot of the island. I had my gun along, but I hadn't shot nothing; it was

for protection; thought I would kill some game nigh home. About this time

I mighty near stepped on a good sized snake, and it went sliding off through

the grass and flowers, and I after it, trying to get a shot at it. I clipped along,

and all of a sudden I bounded right on to the ashes of a camp fire that was

still smoking. ssssssssss

My heart jumped up amongst my lungs. I never waited for to look further,

but uncocked my gun and went sneaking back on my tip-toes as fast as ever I

could. Every now and then I stopped a second, amongst the thick leaves, and

listened; but my breath come so hard I couldn't hear nothing else. I slunk

along another piece further, then listened again; and so on, and so on; if I

see a stump, I took it for a man; if I trod on a stick and broke it, it made me

feel like a person had cut one of my breaths in two and I only got half, and the

short half, too. ssssssssss

When I got to camp I warn't feeling very brash, there warn't much sand in

my craw; but I says, this ain't no time to be fooling around. So I got all my

traps into my canoe again so as to have them out of sight, and I put out the fire

and scattered the ashes around to look like an old last year's camp, and then

clumb a tree. ssssssssss

I reckon I was up in the tree two hours; but I didn't see nothing, I didn't

hear nothing -- I only thought I heard and seen as much as a thousand things.

Well, I couldn't stay up there forever; so at last I got down, but I kept in the

thick woods and on the lookout all the time. All I could get to eat was berries

and what was left over from breakfast. ssssssssss

By the time it was night I was pretty hungry. So when it was good and

dark, I slid out from shore before moonrise and paddled over to the Illinois

bank -- about a quarter of a mile. I went out in the woods and cooked a supper,

and I had about made up my mind I would stay there all night, when I hear a

plunkety-plunk, plunkety-plunk, and says to myself, horses coming; and next I

hear people's voices. I got everything into the canoe as quick as I could, and

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