slept at some
distance from the animal, so that the noise of the beast's stamping and
browsing might not lead to the discovery of his own whereabouts.

As the evening of the second day of his return came round, Sam found
himself genuinely sick. His foot and leg were much inflamed, and the
excitement of the preceding night, together with his continued exposure
to the drenching dews of the Southern autumn, had brought back his fever
with increased violence, and a very brief experiment convinced him that
he could not go further that night. He mounted his horse, but had ridden
less than a mile when he felt a giddiness coming over him and found it
necessary to abandon the effort to ride that night. He could hardly see,
and the pain in his head, neck, back and limbs was excruciating. He
dismounted and threw himself down on the ground without taking the
trouble even to separate himself from his horse. The truth is, Sam had
what they call in South Carolina country fever, a high type of malarial
fever, which stupefies and benumbs its victim almost as soon as it
attacks him. The dews in the far South, especially in the fall, are so
heavy that the water will drip and even stream off the foliage of the
trees all night, and Sam had been drenched every night during both his
journeys, having no fire by which to warm himself or dry his clothes.
Even without this drenching the poisonous exhalations of the swamps and
woods would doubtless have given him the fever, and as it was he had it
very severely. He laid down again almost under his horse's feet and fell
into a sort of stupor. He knew that his fever required treatment, and
that it would rapidly sap his strength, and the thought came to him:
What if he should die there and never get back to the tree fortress? He
was too sick to care for himself, but the thought of little Judie
haunted his dreams, and he was seized with a semi-delirious impulse to
remount his horse and ride straight away to the hiding-place in which he
had left her, regardless of Indians, and of everything else. He dreamed
a dozen times that he was doing this, and finally, when morning came, he
forgot all about the danger of travelling by daylight, and mounting his
horse in a confused, half-delirious way, rode straight out of the woods
towards the open country, which he had hitherto so carefully avoided.

CHAPTER VIII.

WEATHERFORD.

The fiercest and most conspicuous leader of the Indians in this war was
W