According to Uncle Billy the Wardsboro panther was a mere kitten to the one that he once encountered when he was a boy of fourteen.

Our old Squire, who then was fifteen years old, was with him and shared the experience.

But try as we would, we never could induce him to tell the story.

"You get Uncle Billy Murch to tell you about that," he would say and laugh.

"That's Uncle Billy's story; he tells it a little better every time, and he has got that catamount so large now that I am beginning to think that it must have been a survival of the cave tiger." Yet when pinned down to it the old Squire admitted that he was with Grandsir Billy on that night and that they did have an alarming experience with an animal that beyond doubt was a large and hungry panther.
I must have heard the story ten or twelve times in all, and I recollect many of Grandsir Billy's words and expressions.