and
corn bread. The squire again looked round for the bottle, and again
found nothing but emptiness. He helped me to carry my canoe along the
unsteady footing of the dark swamp to the lower side of the raft of
logs, and warmly pressed my hand as he whispered: "My dear B----, I
shall think of you until you get past those dreadful 'wretches.' Keep an
eye on your little boat, or they'll devil you."

Propelled by my double paddle, the canoe seemed to fly through the great
forest that rose with its tall trunks and weird, moss-draped arms, out
of the water. The owls were still hooting. Indeed, the dolorous voice of
this bird of darkness sounded through the heavy woods at intervals
throughout the day. I seemed to have left the real world behind me, and
to have entered upon a landless region of sky, trees, and water.

"Beware of the cut-offs," said Hall, before I left. "Only the Crackers
and shingle-makers know them. If followed, they would save you many a
mile, but every opening through the swamp is not a cut-off. Keep to the
main stream, though it be more crooked and longer. If you take to the
cut-offs, you may get into passages that will lead you off into the
swamps and into interior bayous, from which you will never emerge. Men
have starved to death in such places."

So I followed the winding stream, which turned back upon itself, running
north and south, and east and west, as if trying to box the compass by
following the sun in its revolution. After paddling down one bend, I
could toss a stick through the trees into the stream where the canoe had
cleaved its waters a quarter of a mile behind me.

The thought of what I should do in this landless region if my frail
shell, in its rapid flight to the sea, happened to be pierced by a snag,
was, to say the least, not a comforting one. On what could I stand to
repair it? To climb a tree seemed, in such a case, the only resource;
and then what anxious waiting there would be for some cypress-shingle
maker, in his dug-out canoe, to come to the rescue, and take the
traveller from his dangerous lodgings between heaven and earth; or it
might be that no one would pass that way, and the weary waiting would be
even unto death.

But sounds now reached my ears that made me feel that I was not quite
alone in this desolate swamp. The gray squirrels scolded among the
tree-tops; robins, the brown thrush, and a large black woodpecker with
his bright red head, each reminded me of Him withou