Emerging from the brier patch with his coat tails torn into ribbons, the mud-begrimed professor held on the even tenor of his way without any diminution of speed for a hundred yards or so, when his pace began to slacken a little. Another scream, however, put him to his mettle again, but as that was the last, and as he was about exhausted, he soon settled down to a walk, and presently stumbling over a log, he picked himself up and seated himself thereon.
After resting a while, plunged in the meantime in a deep cogitation, he finally concluded to try and seek a shelter for the remainder of the night. So, starting forward, he wandered about first in one direction and then in another, and it was not until daylight began to streak the eastern horizon that he stumbled on a clearing in the woods, in the midst of which was a log cabin.
Cautiously approaching the cabin, he had reached the foot of a sapling some fifty steps from the door when a big dog came dashing around the corner of the house, barking in a most furious manner.
No sooner did the professor catch sight of the dog bouncing along in the direction of him and the sapling than he was seized with such a sudden panic as to cause him to grasp the sapling in his arms and start up it, though, owing to want of practice, with hardly the agility of a squirrel. After a tremendous effort he succeeded in reaching a fork some ten feet from the ground, where he seated himself, and awaited the issue of events.
He didn't have long to wait. The furious barking of the dog soon roused the inmates of the cabin.
Scarcely a minute had elapsed after the professor had succeeded, by the most superhuman exertions, in seating himself comfortably in the fork of the sapling, out of the reach of the dog, when the door of the cabin opened and a huge six-footer of a backwoodsman, somewhat airily attired, with a rifle of corresponding size with himself in his hand, emerged therefrom.
"What you got thar, Bull?" said the man, as he approached the sapling, at the root of which the dog was barking in a most vociferous manner. "What is it, old feller?" he continued. "B'ar, painter, ur catamount?"
Bull's response was an abortive attempt to climb the tree, accompanied by a most furious outburst of barking.
"Be quiet, old feller," said the man; "we'll soon see what it is," at the same time raising his rifle to his shoulder.