CHAPTER XVIII.
ODDS AND ENDS.
The Spring-in-rock, or, as it was sometimes, by a curious perversion, called, the "rock-in-spring," was a spring running out of a cave-like fissure in a high limestone cliff.

Here the old man sheltered himself on that dreary Christmas evening, until Bud brought his roan colt to the top of the cliff above, and he and Ralph helped the old man up the cliff and into the saddle.

Ralph went back to bed, but Bud, who was only too eager to put in his best licks, walked by the side of old John Pearson the six miles over to Buckeye Run, and at last, after eleven o'clock, he deposited him in a hollow sycamore by the road, there to wait the coming of the mail-wagon that would carry him into Jackson County.
"Good-by," said the basket-maker, as Bud mounted the colt to return.

"Ef I'm wanted jest send me word, and I'll make a forrard movement any time.
I don't like this 'ere thing of running off in the night-time.

But I reckon General Winfield Scott would a ordered a retreat ef he'd a been in my shoes.