ut by way of ascertaining his whereabouts he
also knew to be useless as well as dangerous, as by doing so he would
make his own position known to the enemy.

He also began to feel certain pricking sensations in his right leg as
well as in his conscience. The leg grew more painful as he advanced,
and, on examination of the limb by feeling, he found, to his surprise,
that he had received a bullet-wound in the thigh. Moreover he
discovered that his trousers were wet with blood, and that there was a
continuous flow of the vital fluid from the wound. This at once
accounted to him for some very unusual feelings of faintness which had
come over him, and which he had at first attributed to his frequent and
violent falls.

The importance of checking the haemorrhage was so obvious, that he at
once sat down and did his best to bind up the wound with the red cotton
kerchief that encircled his neck. Having accomplished this as well as
he could in the dark, he resumed his journey, and, after several hours
of laborious scrambling, at last came to a halt with a feeling of very
considerable, and to him unusual, exhaustion.

Again he sat down on what seemed to be a bed of moss, and began to
meditate.

"Impossible to go further!" he thought. "I feel quite knocked up.
Strange! I never felt like this before. It must have been the tumbles
that did it, or it may be that I've lost more blood than I suppose.
I'll rest a bit now, and begin a search for Fergus by the first streak
of dawn."

In pursuance of this intention, the wearied man lay down, and putting
his head on a mossy pillow, fell into a profound sleep, which was not
broken till the sun was high in the heavens on the following day.

When at last he did awake, and attempted to sit up, Dan felt, to his
surprise and no small alarm, that he was as weak as a child, that his
leg lay in a pool of coagulated gore, and that blood was still slowly
trickling from the wound in his thigh.

Although disposed to lie down and give way to an almost irresistible
tendency to slumber, Dan was too well aware that death stared him in the
face to succumb to the feeling without a struggle. He therefore made a
mighty effort of will; sat up; undid the soaking bandage, and proceeded
to extemporise a sort of tourniquet with it and a short piece of stick.

The contrivance, rude as it was, proved effectual, for it stopped the
bleeding, but Dan could not help feeling that he had already lost so
muc