"When?" he gasped, with his mouth and eyes a little wider open.
"This afternoon," said I, calmly and complacently.
"Where?"
"Why just below that thicket; just below where you sat down on the log."
The old man sat and gazed at me for two or three minutes while I continued to eat as if nothing unusual had happened.
"Are you joking?" he said at last.
"No; I'm telling you the straight truth. The liver and heart are hanging out there on the corner of the cabin; go out and look at them."
"Well, I'll be dad blasted!" shouted the old man, as he jumped up and grasped me by the hand. "Why on earth didn't you say so when you first came in? What did you want to deceive me for? Why did you want to do all that kicking about the hunting being so poor?"
"Oh, I just wanted to have a little fun with you."
Throughout that evening Pease was one of the happiest men I ever saw. He seemed, and, in fact, said he was, twice as proud to have me, his guest, kill a deer as he would have been to have killed it himself.