torrent,
had shaken every nerve.

"I'm over," called out Fortner. "Ye try hit now."

Harry balanced his gun so as to embarrass him the least, and carefully
felt with his left foot for the edge of the chasm. The catamount
announced his renewed presence by a vindictive scream. The clouds parted
just enough to let through a rift of gray light, but it fell not upon
the brink of the black gap in the path. It showed for an instant the
whirlpool, with fragments of tree trunks, of ghastly likeness to drowned
human bodies, eddying dizzily around.

"Come on," called out Fortner, impatiently.

Harry stepped out desperately. For a mental eternity he hung in air. His
hands relaxed and his gun dropped with a crash and a splash. Then his
foot touched the other side with nervous doubtfulness. It slipped,
and he felt himself falling--falling into all that he feared. Fortner
grasped his collar with a strong hand, and dragged him up against the
rocky wall of the path.

"Thar, yer all right," he said, panting with the exertion, "but hit wuz
a mouty loud call for ye. Gabriel's ho'n couldn't've made a much mo'
powerful one."

"I've lost my gun," said Harry, regretfully, as soon as he could compose
himself.

"Cuss-an'-burn the blasted ole smooth-bore," said Fortner,
contemptuously. "Don't waste no tear on that ole kick-out-behind. We'll
go 'long 'tween Wildcat an' the Ford, an' pick up a wagon-load uv ez
good shooters ez thet clumsy chunk o' pot-metal wuz. Shake yourself
together. We've on'y got a mile or so ter go now."

In Harry's condition, the "mile or so" seemed to be stretching out a
long ways around the globe, and he began to ask himself how near he was
to the much-referred-to "heart of the Southern Confederacy."

At length a little fading toward gray of the thick blackness, to that
they had emerged from the heavy woods into more open country. Harry
thought they were come to fields, but he could see nothing, and without
remark plodded painfully after his leader.

Suddenly a large pack of dogs immediately in front of them broke the
stillness with a startling diapason, ranging from the deep bass of the
mastiff to the ringing bark of the fox-hounds. Mingled with this was the
sound of the whole pack rushing fiercely forward. Fortner stopped in his
tracks so abruptly that Glen stumbled against him. The mountaineer
gave the peculiar whistle he had uttered at the Ford. The rush ceased
instantly. The deep growls of the mastiffs an