Uncle Dick and Lisa's Old Time Animal Tales

The Kansas correspondent of the St. Louis Republican tells the following story;
“A few days since, while riding in the rear of our town, in a small ravine, through which a streamlet takes a quiet way beneath its crystal covering, and whose irrigation has produced tall grasses and shrubs that make a hiding place for game, I was suddenly upon a large black wolf. He was scratching at a thin place in the ice, and seemed almost famished for water. When he saw me he started in full run for the forest in the river bottom. I kept upon his heels, and tried to ride upon him. He was almost exhausted, and just as I supposed he would give out, he slipped into the hollow of a large cotton-wood tree. I stopped the hole through which he entered, and came back to town and got an axe and the dogs, and with the assistance of Frank Mahan and Wm. Palmer, and together we returned to cut him out. The dogs were anxious, and we were prepared with our guns to receive him. When we made a large hole, about four feet from the ground, the dogs jumped at it on the outside and the wolf on the inside, and such barking, growling, snapping and howling I never heard before. It made the woods resound for a great distance, and brought several of the neighbors to the spot. Things continued so for a while, and we consulted what had best be done. We could not shoot the wolf through the opening without too great a risk of killing the dogs, for he only appeared at the inside when the dogs were at the outside. We finally concluded to stop the hole that we had made, and fell the tree by cutting a narrow gash around it. The tree came down a little sooner than we expected. Frank Mahan had the axe lifted for another stroke, as it went over with a crash. The wolf, with bristled back, and glaring eyes, and glittering teeth, leaped at his throat with terrible ferocity. The descending axe met half way, cleaving its skull and laying it dead at his feet. We had no time to express our wonder, and congratulations at his narrow and singular escape, before our attention was called to that which filled us with amazement if not dread. It was a human skeleton, of medium size, and of a female, hidden in the cavity of the tree. Its posture was erect, and the bones were held together by a kind of clear integument, that seemed to cover, like a transparent skin, the entire frame. The jar of the felled tree severed several of the joints, and we drew them all out and placed them again in form. The proportions were perfect and the limbs straight-indicating a contour, when in flesh, of perfect symmetry. Who could it have been that thus perished years ago in this wild forest, and how came her death in this strange place, were queries that were immediately suggested. Could it have been some maiden, who, like the bride in the “mistletoe Bough,” had concealed herself from her lover in the heart of this old tree, and become fastened there and died.