" But there was again a long silence and state of suspense;
the chase had turned another way. There were faint distant yaps. The
fire burned low and fell together with a shower of sparks. The smaller
boys began to grow chilly and sleepy, when there was a thud and rustle
and snapping of twigs close at hand, then the gasp of a breathless dog.
Two dim shapes rushed by; a shower of bark fell, and a dog began to sing
at the foot of the great twisted pine not fifty feet away.
"Hooray for Tiger!" yelled the boys; but the dog's voice filled all the
woods. It might have echoed to the mountain-tops. There was the old
coon; they could all see him half-way up the tree, flat to the great
limb. They heaped the fire with dry branches till it flared high. Now
they lost him in a shadow as he twisted about the tree. John York fired,
and Isaac Brown fired, and the boys took a turn at the guns, while John
Henry started to climb a neighboring oak; but at last it was Isaac who
brought the coon to ground with a lucky shot, and the dog stopped his
deafening bark and frantic leaping in the underbrush, and after an
astonishing moment of silence crept out, a proud victor, to his prouder
master's feet.
"Goodness alive, who's this? Good for you, old handsome! Why, I'll be
hanged if it ain't old Rover, boys; _it's old Rover_!" But Isaac could
not speak another word. They all crowded round the wistful, clumsy old
dog, whose eyes shone bright, though his breath was all gone.
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