le salt you can travel over all South Florida.".

Ned looked so unhappy over their prospects that Dick took the lead,
saying:

"If we don't get out of this swamp pretty soon we'll have to camp in
it, and we'll need some daylight to fix up in."

At this moment a night heron lit on a branch near Dick, who raised
his gun and shot it.

"That's our supper, Ned. I wouldn't shoot a bird sitting unless I
was starving. Don't the woods look lighter over there?" In a few
minutes the boys were in an open prairie, where Dick produced a
waterproof match-box, which was well filled, and a small bag of
salt. A fire was soon built, the heron dressed, broiled and eaten
with only fingers for forks. The boys washed down their dinners with
water from a pool, which they first examined for moccasins by the
light of a burning palmetto fan.

Ned slept with his rifle by his side, and Dick was awakened in the
morning by its discharge. He saw Ned sitting beside him with the
rifle in his hand, while a hundred yards away, on the edge of the
clearing, a buck lay on his back kicking. While the boys were
hoisting the carcass to the branch of a tree, Ned said to Dick:

"I was in a blue funk yesterday afternoon. I want you to promise to
kick me if I get scared that way again."

Dick laughed and replied:

"That would be all right, Ned, if I felt sure what you would be
doing while I was kicking you."

After breakfast, which consisted of venison, Dick suggested that
they go to work systematically to find their lost camp, and
proceeded to climb a tall palmetto that stood in the clearing to
take an observation. When half way up the tree he slid back to the
ground looking like a chimney-sweep. For the outside of the
palmetto, like most of those that grow on prairies, had been turned
into charcoal by the burning of the prairie grass.

"Ned," said Dick, when the former had stopped laughing at the
blackamoor before him because he was out of breath, "I guess it's
your turn to kick me. Do you see that trail where I stopped last
night to build our camp-fire because I didn't know the way to camp?"

"See it now. Didn't know it was there before, though."

"No more did I; but I saw it yesterday morning, and I took special
notice of this palmetto and made sure that I'd never forget this
prairie. Why, Ned, this is our own camping-ground, and I could throw
a biscuit from this prairie to our canoe. Now you can kick."

After the boys had carried their venison