ent of the bog before them,
and, hot as it was now, betrayed the deathly chill lurking under such a
coverlet at night. In every other direction lay the cypress jungle; and
whether they saw the front or back of Longfer Hill, and on which side
the river ran, steering for which they could steer for home, they had
not the skill to say. Thus, what way to go they still were undecided,
when, at something moving near them, they started to their feet in a
faint terror, delaying only a single instant to gaze at it,--a serpent,
that, coiled round the stem above, had previously seemed nothing but a
splendid parasite, and that just lifted its hooded head crusted with
gems, and flickered a long cleft tongue of flame over them, while
loosening in great loops from its basking-place. They vouchsafed it no
second look, but, with one leap over the log, through the black mire,
and from clump to clump of moss, sped away,--if that could be called
speed which was hindered at each moment by waylaying briers and
entangling ropes of blossoming vines, by delays in threatening quagmires
and bewilderments in thickets beset by clouds of insects, by trips and
stumbles and falls and bruises, and many a pause for tears and
complaints and ejaculations of despair.

Meanwhile the heat of the day was mitigated by thin clouds sliding over
the sun and banking up the horizon, though the hot wind still blew
sweetly and steadily from the open quarter of the sky.

"Oh, what has become of us?" cried Miss Emma at length, when the shadows
began to thicken, and out of the impenetrable forest and morass about
them they could detect no path.

"We's los' into de swamp, Miss Emma," answered Flor, in a kind of gloomy
defiance of the worst of it,--"da' 's all."

"And here we shall die!" cried the other.

And she flung herself, face down, upon the floor.

Flor was beside her instantly, taking her head upon her knee. Her own
heart was sinking like lead; but she plucked it up, and for the other's
sake snapped her fingers at Fortune.

"Lors, Miss, dar's so many berries we caan' starve nowes. I's 'bout to
build a fire soon's it's dark; dis yere's a dry spot, ye see now. An',
bress you, dey'll be out after us afore mornin',--de whole farm-full."

"With the dogs!" cried Miss Emma. "Oh, Floss, that I should live for
that! to be hunted in the swamp with dogs!"

Flor was silent a moment or two. The custom personally affected her for
the first time; worse than the barbarit