In time I grew used to the fellow, but I will admit that at first I accepted his services with some honest trepidation.

As I watched him going ahead of me, crouching behind bushes, springing from hummock to hummock, silent and alert, quivering like an animal in search of prey, my attention was centered on him rather than on any possible quarry.
I shall never forget running across him in the woods one afternoon when I had gone out snipe shooting alone.

Whether he had followed me or whether we had chosen the same vicinity by chance, I do not know; but at any rate as I came out from the underbrush on the edge of a low, swampy place, I almost stepped on the man.

He was stretched face downward on the black, oozy soil with his arm buried in a hole at the foot of a tree.
"Why Mose!" I cried in amazement, "what on earth are you doing here ?" He responded without raising his head.
"I's aftah a snake, sah.

I see a big fat gahtah snake a-lopin' into dis yere hole, an' he's skulkin' dar now thinkin' like he gwine to fool me.
But he cayn't do dat, sah.