, and it passed
harmlessly through the side far above the water line. Before the
pursuers could draw near enough to make their fire certain, the canoe
had passed in amongst the trees and the outlaws reined in their mounts
swearing loudly.

As he neared it, Walter had watched the forest with growing amazement.
The river seemed to end at its edge, but as he drew closer the reason
for the anxiety of the outlaws to prevent his entering it was plain.
No horse could travel through that dark, gloomy expanse. It was a
floating forest. Great cypress and giant bays reared their mighty
stems from the surface of black scummy water. Amongst their boughs
bloomed brilliant orchids and from limb to limb stretched tangled
masses of creeping vines and briers.

The trees with their huge spreading roots grew so closely together that
it was with difficulty that Walter forced the canoe in and out between
them. His exultation at his escape from their enemies had given way to
a settled despair. From descriptions he had heard, he recognized this
mighty floating forest as the fringe which surrounds that greatest of
all mysterious, trackless swamps, the Everglades. Before him lay the
mighty unknown, unexplored morass, reeking with fever, and infested
with serpents; behind him waited sure death at the hands of the outlaws.

One faint hope alone remained to him. If his strength held out, he
might in time come upon a camp of the Seminoles, the only human beings
in this unknown land.

Considering the small numbers of the Indians and the vastness of the
swamp, it was a faint chance indeed that he or his companion would live
to see any of the tribe, but, faint as it was, no other hope remained
and Walter sent the canoe onward with feeble strokes.

Gradually the trees grew further and further apart until at last the
canoe passed out from their shadows into a lake, surrounded by tall
growing grass and reeds. Far as the eye could reach stretched the
dismal swamp, broken here and there by lakes or creeks and now and then
by an island of higher ground rising from the rotting mud.

Under the heat of the blazing sun there rose around the canoe thick
vapors from the scum-covered water and rotting vegetation, bearing in
their foul embrace a sickening, deadly stench.

The paddle strokes grew slower and slower, and gradually ceased,
Walter's eyes slowly closed, and he sank down unconscious. His paddle
fell from his nerveless hand and floated awa