An't
you ashamed of yourself now, you greedy old devil?"
"It doos go right, I swon!" was the only reply that could be got out of
him.
"That's more a plaguy sight than the bullets will do, out of your old
tower musket; you're so drunk now, I fancy, that you couldn't hold it
straight enough to hit a deer at three rods, let alone thirty, which you
are so fond of chattering about."
"Do tell now," replied Tom, "did you, or any other feller, ever see me
shoot the worser for a mite of liquor, and as for deer, that's all a no
sich thing; there arnt no deer a this side of Duckseedar's. It's all a
lie of Teachman's and that Deckering son of a gun."
"Holloa! hold up, Tom--recollect yesterday!--I thought there had been no
cock down by the first bridge there, these six years; why you're getting
quite stupid, and a croaker too, in your old age."
"Mayhap I be," he answered rather gruffly; "mayhap I be, but you won't
git no deer to-day, I'll stand drinks for the company; and if we doos
start one, I'll lay on my own musket agin your rifle."
"Well! we'll soon see, for here we are," Harry replied, as after leaving
the high-road just at the summit of the Bellevale mountain, he rattled
down a very broken rutty bye-road at the rate of at least eight miles an
hour, vastly to the discomfiture of our fat host, whose fleshy sides
were jolted almost out of their skin by the concussion of the wheels
against the many stones and jogs which opposed their progress.
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