ll get
us shet ob dis yere swamp mighty sudd'n!"

And soothed by the dreamy motion, entirely fatigued, borne swiftly along
in strong arms, under the low, waving boughs in the dim forest darkness,
she was drowsed again with slumber, from which she woke only on being
placed in the bottom of a skiff to turn over into a deeper dream than
before. Flor nodded triumphantly to her companion, in the beginning,
keeping pace beside him with short runs,--there could be no fear of
babble about that of which one knew nothing,--and took her seat at last
in the boat as he directed, while with a long pole he pushed out into
the deeper water away from the shadow of the shore, and then went
steering between the jags and gnarls, that, half protruding from the
dark expanses, seemed the heads of strange and preternatural monsters.
Now and then a current carried them; now and then their boatman sculled,
now and then in shallower places poled along; sometimes he rested, and
in the intervals took occasion to continue his missionary labor upon
Flor,--his first object being to convince her she had a soul, and his
second that in bondage every chance to save that soul alive was against
her. Then he drew slight pictures of a different way of things, such as
had solaced his own imagination, rude, but happy idyls of freedom: the
small house, one's own; the red light in the window, a guiding star for
weary feet at night coming home to comfort and smiles and cheer; no
dark, haunting fear of a hand to reach between one and those loved
dearest; no more branding like cattle, manhood and womanhood
acknowledged, met with help and welcome and kind hands, cringing no
more, but standing erect, drinking God's free sunshine, and growing
nearer heaven. How much or how little of all his dream poor Sarp
realized, if ever he reached the land of his desire at all, Heaven only
knows. But Flor listened to him as if he recited some delightful
fairy-tale,--charming indeed, but all as improbable as though one were
telling her that black was white. Then, too, there was another dream of
Sarp's,--the dream of a whole race loosening itself from the clinging
clod. Flor got a glimmer of his meaning,--only a glimmer; it made her
heart beat faster, but it was so grand she liked the other best.

So, creeping through narrow creeks, now they skirted the edges of the
long, low, flat morass,--now wound round the giant trunk of a fallen
tree that nearly bridged the pool whose dark mant