"Well, last week, on my down trip, as we rounded a point in one of those narrow places, there, right out in mid-river, was a big buck, swimming across. Two swampers had spied him and were hot after him in a skiff."
"Oh," cried Ramsey, "I hope he got away!"
"Why, I partly hoped he would," laughed the bishop, "and partly I hoped they'd get him."
"Characteristic," she heard the planter say to himself.
"And sure enough," the tale went on, "just as his forefeet hit the bank—" But there Hugh's messenger reappeared, and as Hugh listened to his murmured report the deer's historian avoided oblivion only by asking:
"Well, Mr. Courteney, after all, what was it?"
"Tell the bishop," said Hugh to the boy.
"'T'uz a man, suh," the servant announced, and when the ladies exclaimed he amended, "leas'wise a deckhan', suh."
"Thank Heaven!" thought several, not because it was a man but because the bells jingled again and the moving boat resumed her own blessed sounds. But the bishop was angry—too angry for table talk. He had his suspicions.
"Did deckhands make all that row?"