"Like an electric shock, a sensation pervaded my whole frame, which, although I can never forget, I must most imperfectly describe. I was in a trance—the blood overcharged my brain—a murmuring sound, as of an Aeolian, filled my ears-drops, like rain, oozed from my face—my hat, first elevated to the very tips of the hairs, worked backwards and fell to the ground—in brief, I was regularly, and for the first and last time in my life, in a state of fascination.
"No sensation of languor troubled me, for although I felt no inclination to go forward, yet I seemed to myself perfectly able and willing to stay where I was, so long as the world lasted. I was perfectly happy in spite of my bodily excitement. A bright halo of changeable colors, for all the world like the changeable lights I have seen displayed in front of the American Museum, New York, filled all my vision, in the very focus of which gleamed two keen points, like sparks from the blacksmith's anvil, and they were so vivid that they seemed to pierce me through and through.
"How long this continued I cannot say, but I suppose only for a minute. So far as my own perception of time's flight is concerned, however, it might have been an age.
"I was awakened by the harsh crackling of some dry sticks upon which the boy had stepped as he continued to shuffle forward. The recovery was as sudden as the attack. In an instant I was disenchanted. The bush looked familiar, and I heard the fall of water in the stream, but a thought of imminent danger now possessed my mind; so shouting with a voice that made the woods ring, I seized the lad around the waist, and heavy as he was, ran with him quite a quarter of a mile without stopping. I confess it most frankly that I didn't stop until I fell exhausted in the public road. To tell the cowardly truth, I should have ran on until now if I had been able. So we fell down together and lay for a good while panting.
"Then I got up and propping myself against a poplar, took little John on my knee. His nervous system was unstrung. He was weeping bitterly, and sobbing as if his heart would break. His flesh was cold and clammy, his pulse was almost still, and he hadn't strength to raise his hands to his mouth.
"I had some root ginger in my pocket—I always carry a piece with me—which I chewed and made him swallow. This revived him. Then I rubbed him briskly, pinched his skin in divers tender spots, and by these means and cheerful conversation, got him so that he could stand alone and answer my questions. I never saw such a fool thing as he was! He was not at all alarmed, very willingly consented to return with me—for I'd die but what I'd see it but—thought there ought to be a perch on his hook by this time, thought it was Sunday, thought there was snow somewhere, 'twas so cold,—and all such notions as that.
"Every few minutes he would burst into an uncontrollable flood of tears, but he couldn't tell for what.
"You will want to know how I felt all this time. Well, when I got a minute's leisure from attending to him and could notice my own feelings, I found that I was snivelling too! that my pulse was small, my nose had been profusely bleeding, and the blood had drenched me to the very boot tops, and I felt altogether as exhausted as one does who has had a month's spell of the chills.
"We were a precious pair, daddy and son, as we sat under that poplar. I am sure I never felt so foolish in all my life. Well, back we started, for my spunk was up; and, beside that, I had left my hat, handkerchief, dinner, and memorandum book, and was bound to have them. I felt the most burning curiosity to understand the puzzle while my mental faculties were completely obfuscated by it.
"Neither of us said a word of the affair itself, for John didn't seem to know that he had been frightened, and I was afraid to alarm him by speaking of it. He asked no questions of any sort, although in general he is a miniature Paul Pry, expressed no surprise that I was bareheaded and bloody, or that we had come so far from the fishing place and left our tackle behind. His face expressed confusion, such as a child will exhibit when he is waked suddenly by falling out of bed, and commences grasping around the bedpost preparatory to getting in again. I knew that something frightful was there, and felt that we had escaped some great peril, but what the object or what the peril I had no idea whatever. I am sure, however, that the notion of a snake never entered my mind, but if any thing tangible, if was of a wild cat, for the recollection of Cooper's panther story in the Pioneers occurred to me, and I cut a stout hickory sapling to be prepared. We arrived with slow steps at the haunted spot, for both were exhausted, and I felt the value of prudence. There lay my basket by the beech root, more by token that the hogs had found it and were just devouring the last morsel of bread and meat so carefully deposited therein.