In a corner of the barn, I found my old chestnut club, a hickory stave, well coiled with lead at the top.
Shoving this under my jacket, so no prying eyes could see it, I joined Ned at the meeting-place, and off we went in high spirits for the Yellow-breeches.
It was a good mile to Big Woods, for we had to circle away down to Hake's Mill to get across the creek, but we felt well repaid for our trouble when we arrived there.

The fallen nuts lay thick amid the dead leaves, and up on the half-naked trees the splitting hulls hung in clusters, willing to drop their burden at the least rustle of the breeze.
We heaped the shellbarks in great piles, ready to stow away in Ned's big wheat bag; and, when the ground was cleaned up pretty well, and the leaves had been thoroughly raked, we turned our attention to a close cluster of trees that stood close by the creek.

These nuts were unusually large, and thin-shelled.

The hulls were cracked apart, but very few nuts lay on the ground, so I hauled out my club, and drove it fairly into the heart of the tree.

A shower of nuts came down, with a merry clatter that gladdened our hearts; but the club, striking the trunk of the tree, bounded sideways and lodged in the crotch of a limb overhanging the creek, some twenty or thirty feet above the water.
Here was a dilemma.