The Austin Weekly Statesman

NICELY CAUGHT.

About the latest arrival at the Hotel de Hornsby is Tom Jackson, a colored citizen living on Robinson hill, whose story is an emphatic warning to all persons who may be tempted to supply their larder at the expense of a neighbor. It seems that Mr. Isherwood, a gentleman that lives on the old Turner place, about two miles out of town, is a raiser of a very fine breed of swine. Some time ago one of his best hogs mysteriously disappeared, but the occurrence of yesterday throws plenty of light on the subject of the missing porker. A man who works with Isherwood was out hunting yesterday afternoon, when he came across the colored man previously mentioned reclining at his ease under the shadows of a wide-spreading oak, apparently in a happy and contented frame of mind--in a kind of "dolce far niente" attitude, so to speak. Some conversation was entered into between the parties when happening to cast his eye around, the hunter spied a sack about fifteen or twenty feet off, but made no remark at the time. Leaving the negro, he soon came upon the entrails of some animal, still warm, and called the man to him. The negro pretended to be quite as astonished as the other, whose suspicions becoming aroused, returned to the house and told Mr. Isherwood what he had discovered in the pasture. Together they went to the spot where the negro had been seen, but the gentleman

had departed.

Hunting around, the sack mentioned above, was found, and in it portions of a hog that had been freshly killed. It didn't require an elaborate chain of reasoning to connect the darkey that had vanished and the slaughtered swine. So thought the two gentlemen, and basing their action upon a pretty shrewd guess as to the future movements of the negro, they sat down to wait for further developments. They didn't have to wait long either. In less than an hour's time the darky was seen by the gentlemen (who had secreted themselves) cautiously approaching the spot where the sack had lain. It is needless to state he didn't find it. A sudden rush was made upon him, and in the twinkling of an eye Tom Jackson was pounced upon and made a prisoner. Besides the hog flesh a hatchet was found in the sack with which the brute was doubtless knocked on the head, it being quite tame, and a very fine animal also valued by its owner at $35. Deputy Sheriff Thorp was sent for, and now Mr. Jackson has leisure to meditate on the uncertainties of appropriating the hogs of another without the consent of the owner as a preliminary step.