The Daily Herald

A Kentucky Story.--A writer in the U. S. Telegraph gives the following as a story which he heard from an old Kentuckian:-

Myself and three or four other gentlemen visited a pigeon roost, and carried with us the old hunter for a pilot. Upon our arrival the old hunter cautioned us to be careful where and how we fastened our horses, for, says he, I visited this place some two or three years since, in company with six other gentlemen; we all had large, fine, fat horses; when we arrived, I hunted for some time for a suitable place to fasten our horses; at last I found a beautiful little grove of hickory grubs, to one of which I hitched my horse securely, and the balance of the company came up, hitched theirs to grubs near by. We were then satisfied, having left them, and went about diverting ourselves, killing pigeons and examining their roosts until morning.

When we returned for our horses they had disappeared, and with them all that beautiful little grove of hickory grubs. We could not be mistaken in the place, the ground was very rich and loose, and we could trace our horses to the very spot where we had left them and no further; and they could not have walked off without our being able to trace them.

This strange disappearance of the horses and hickory grubs somewhat stunned us, and we, after a long consultation, all came to the conclusion that our horses, grubs and all, had taken wing and flown away with the pigeons, and had just given up all search and hope of ever recovering them, and were about to start off on foot for home, when I heard a shaking of the leaves over our head: I looked up, and to our infinite surprise and satisfaction, there hung all our horses in the very top of the tallest hickory trees to be found in the woods. He said that the pigeons had settled so thickly upon the tree, that they had bent the top to the ground, the branches of which they had mistaken for hickory grubs, and hitched their horses to them. In the morning the pigeons had flown away and eased the tree to its burden, when it rose up easily with its seven large horses.—He said that their bridles were all new, and of the strongest and best leather; they sent off for an axe, cut the tree down, (by degrees of course) and recovered all their horses in perfect safety, not the least injured, only that the neck of each was stretched about a foot longer than usual. We took care not to fasten our horses to hickory grubs, so that when we returned for them we found them all safe on terra firma.