ntly from quite another direction.

It was with a feeling of relief that he turned from the way to the
passage, and forcing his way on for some little distance, he paused
again, and listened with almost a superstitious dread, for the sounds
heard were in the midst of the gloomy wilderness, where the foot of man
rarely trod, and appealed strongly to the superstitious part of the
youth's nature.

In fact, after listening some time, and hearing nothing, the
uncomfortable sensation increased, and he began to back away, when the
sound was again heard--a harsh, wild, but very subdued cry from quite a
different direction, thrilling the lad's nerves, and making him turn
hastily to flee from the dark precincts.

For it was like no other sound which he had ever heard. No animal or
bird could cry like that. The hedgehog, if shut up in a pit, would
sometimes utter a wild strange noise, which, heard in the darkness, was
startling as the shriek or hoot of an owl. But it was none of these,
and giving way for the moment to ignorant superstition, Fred began to
get out of the wilderness as fast as he could, till he stumbled over a
briar stretched right across his way, fell heavily, and as he struggled
up again, he heard the cry repeated.

"Oh, how I wish some one was here to knock me over!" he muttered
angrily. "What a miserable coward I am!"

And now, fully convinced that some unhappy wounded man had crawled into
the thicket to die, he went sharply back to where he had seemed nearest
to the sound, and began to search once more.

It was for some time in vain, and probably he would have had to give up
what seemed to be a hopeless task, had he not suddenly seen a bramble
strand feebly thrust aside, and the point of a rusty sword directed
toward him.

He drew his own weapon, and beat the rusty blade away, hacking through a
few bramble strands, and there, deep down in a tunnel of strands and
boughs, was the ghastly blood-besmeared countenance of a man, with
hollow cheeks, sunken eyes, and a look of weakness that strongly
resembled that which, to his sorrow, he had so often seen upon the field
of battle.

The wretched man seemed to make an effort to raise his rusty sword
again, but it fell from his grasp, and he lay staring wildly at his
finder.

"Who are you? How came you here?" began Fred, involuntarily, though he
felt that he knew; and then, with a cry of surprise and horror, he
dropped upon his knees beside the wounded ma