er, waking the echoes till wood and brake and midnight
waters seemed to rock and sway with the sound, and the stars in the sky
to quake in unison with the vibrations. Never at fault, never a moment's
cessation, and presently the shouts of men and the tramp of horses
blended with that deep, tumultuous note of blood crying to heaven for
vengeance. Far, far, down the lake it was. Hoxer could see nothing of
the frantic rout when the hounds paused baffled at the water-side. He
was quick to note the changed tone of the brutes' pursuit, plaintive,
anxious, consciously thwarted. They ran hither and thither, patrolling
the banks, and with all their boasted instinct they could only protest
that the fugitive took to water at this spot. But how? They could not
say, and the men argued in vain. The lake was too broad to swim--there
was no island, no point of vantage. A boat might have taken him off,
and, if so, the craft would now be lying on the opposite bank. A party
set off to skirt the edge of the lake and explore the further shores by
order of the sheriff, for this officer, summoned by telephone, had come
swiftly from the county town in an automobile, to the verge of the
swamp, there accommodated with a horse by a neighboring planter. And
then, Hoxer, lying on the elastic submerged brush, with only a portion
of his face above the surface of the water, watched in a speechless
ecstasy of terror the hue and cry progress on the hither side, his dog,
half dead from exhaustion, unconscious in his arms.

The moon, unmoved as ever, looked calmly down on the turmoil in the
midst of the dense woods. The soft brilliance illumined the long, open
vistas and gave to the sylvan intricacies an effect as of silver
arabesques, a glittering tracery amidst the shadows. But the lunar light
did not suffice. Great torches of pine knots, with a red and yellow
flare and streaming pennants of smoke, darted hither and thither as the
officer's posse searched the bosky recesses without avail.

Presently a new sound!--a crashing iteration--assailed the air. A
frantic crowd was beating the bushes about the margin of the lake and
the verges of the almost impenetrable cane-brake. Here, however, there
could be no hope of discovery, and suddenly a cry arose, unanimously
iterated the next instant, "Fire the cane-brake! Fire the cane-brake!"

For so late had come the rise of the river, so persistent had been the
winter's drought, so delayed the usual inundation of