ue no small distance through the dark, often wet and
almost impenetrable woods. He had taken little rest and less sleep in
his late journeyings, and when at length he cast himself down before
his fire of dead fagots on the raised spot he had chosen, he slept
heavily. He felt safe from man's world, at least for the night.

Only one thing gave him concern as he lay down. It was the fact that
when, with the old woods-habit strong on him, he had approached his
selected camping ground, with such wariness of movement as the
dragging pirogue would allow, he had got quite in sight of it before a
number of deer on it bounded away. He felt an unpleasant wonder to
know what their unwilling boldness might signify.

He did not awake to replenish his fire until there were only a few
live embers shining dimly at his feet. He rose to a sitting posture;
and in that same moment there came a confusion of sound--a trampling
through bushes--that froze his blood, and robbed his open throat of
power to cry. The next instant he knew it was but those same deer. But
the first intelligent thought brought a new fear. These most timid of
creatures had made but a few leaps and stopped. He knew what that
meant! As he leaped to his feet the deer started again, and he heard,
to his horror,--where the ground had been dry and caked when he lay
down,--the plash of their feet in water.

Trembling, he drew his boots on, made and lighted a torch, and in a
moment was dragging his canoe after him in the direction of the
lugger. Presently his steps, too, were plashing. He stooped, waved the
torch low across the water's surface, and followed the gleam with his
scrutiny. But he did so not for any doubt that he would see, as he
did, the yellow flood of the Mississippi. He believed, as he believed
his existence, that his pursuers had let the river in upon the swamp,
ruin whom they might, to drive him from cover.

Presently he stepped into the canoe, cast his torch into the water,
took his paddle, and glided unerringly through a darkness and a wild
tangle of undergrowth, large and small, where you or I could not have
gone ten yards without being lost. He emerged successfully from the
forest into the open prairie, and, under a sky whose stars told him it
would soon be day, glided on down the little bayou lane, between walls
of lofty rushes, up which he had come in the evening, and presently
found the lugger as he had left her, with her light mast down, hidden
amo