He stared at her in wonder, but too wistfully. The cat-briers hung across the opening, and grapevines, like cables of sunken ships, fell many a fathom through the crystal waves of night; but the North Star seemed to find a way to peep through everything, and Virgie heard the words from Hudson, once, of -

"Jess over this branch a bit we is in Delaware!"

Then the crickets and tree-frogs, the bullfrogs and the whippoorwills, the owls and everything, seemed to drown his voice and halloo for hours, "We is in Delaware! we is, we is! we is in Del-a-a-ware!"

A little warming, kindly light at length began to blaze their trail along, as if some gentle predecessor, with a golden adze, had chipped the funereal trees and made them smile a welcome. Small fires were burning in the vegetable mould or surface brush, and the opacity of the forest yielded to the pretty flame which danced and almost sang in a household crackle, like a young girl in love humming tunes as she kindles a fire.

The mighty swamp now grew distinct, yet more inaccessible, as its inner edges seemed transparent in the line of fires, like curtains of lace against the midnight window-panes. The Virginia creeper, light as the flounces of a lady, went whirling upward, as if in a dance; the fallen giant trees were rich in hanging moss; laurel and jasmine appeared beyond the bubbling surface of long, green morass, where life of some kind seemed to turn over comfortably in the rising warmth, like sleepers in bed.

Suddenly the man took Virgie up and carried her through a stream of running water, brown with the tannin matter of the swamp.

"We is in Delaware," he said, soon after, as they reached a camp of shingle sawyers, all deserted, and lighted by the fire, the golden chips strewn around, and the sawdust, like Indian meal, that suggested good, warm pone at Teackle Hall to Virgie.

She put her feet, soaked with swamp water, at a burning log to warm, and hardly saw a mocasson snake glide round the fire and stop, as if to dart at her, and glide away; for Virgie's mind was attributing this kindly fire to the presence of Freedom.

"Oh, I should like to lie here and go to sleep," she said, languidly; "I am so tired."

The man Hudson, wringing wet with the journey's difficulties, threw his arms around her and drew her to his damp yet fiery breast.

"We will sleep here, then," he breathed into her lips; "I love you!"

The incoherence of everything yielded to these sudden words, and on the young maid's startled nature came a reality she had not understood: her guide was drunken with passion.

She struggled in his arms with all her might, but was as a switch in a maniac's hands.

"I stole my ole woman's pass fur you," the infatuated ruffian sighed; "you said you would love the man who got you one, Virgie. You is mine!"

A suffocating sense and heat, more than animal nature, seemed to enclose them. The girl struggled free, her lithe figure exerted with all her dying strength to preserve her modesty.

"Hudson," she cried, "I will tell your wife! God forgive you for insulting a poor, sick, helpless girl in this wild swamp!"