ied in an explosion which stirred the very river to
its deeps! A rising sheet of water curved over him, fell down upon
him, blinded him, strangled him! The cannon had taken an hand in the
game. As he shook his head free from the commotion of the smitten
water he heard the deflected shot humming through the air ahead, and
in an instant it was cracking and smashing the branches in the forest
beyond.

"They will not do that again," he thought; "the next time they will
use a charge of grape. I must keep my eye upon the gun; the smoke
will apprise me--the report arrives too late; it lags behind the
missile. That is a good gun."

Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round--spinning like a top.
The water, the banks, the forests, the now distant bridge, fort and
men, all were commingled and blurred. Objects were represented by
their colors only; circular horizontal streaks of color--that was all
he saw. He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with a
velocity of advance and gyration that made him giddy and sick. In few
moments he was flung upon the gravel at the foot of the left bank of
the stream--the southern bank--and behind a projecting point which
concealed him from his enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the
abrasion of one of his hands on the gravel, restored him, and he wept
with delight. He dug his fingers into the sand, threw it over himself
in handfuls and audibly blessed it. It looked like diamonds, rubies,
emeralds; he could think of nothing beautiful which it did not
resemble. The trees upon the bank were giant garden plants; he noted
a definite order in their arrangement, inhaled the fragrance of their
blooms. A strange roseate light shone through the spaces among their
trunks and the wind made in their branches the music of AEolian harps.
He had not wish to perfect his escape--he was content to remain in
that enchanting spot until retaken.

A whiz and a rattle of grapeshot among the branches high above his
head roused him from his dream. The baffled cannoneer had fired him a
random farewell. He sprang to his feet, rushed up the sloping bank,
and plunged into the forest.

All that day he traveled, laying his course by the rounding sun. The
forest seemed interminable; nowhere did he discover a break in it, not
even a woodman's road. He had not known that he lived in so wild a
region. There was something uncanny in the revelation.

By nightfall he was fatigued, foot