p on yer inemies at Fardale, an' ye shtill kape on doin' av it."

"If I continue to do so, I shall have nothing to trouble my conscience."

Frank did take care of Gage and see that he was given the best medical
aid that money could procure, and, as a result, the fellow was saved
from a madhouse, for he finally recovered. He seemed to appreciate the
mercy shown him by his enemy, for he wrote a letter to Frank that was
filled with entreaties for forgiveness and promised to try to lead a
different life in the future.

"That," said Frank, "is my reward for being merciful to an enemy."

If Jack Jaggers did not perish in the Everglades, he disappeared. Ben
Bowsprit and Black Tom also vanished, and it is possible that they left
their bones in the great Dismal Swamp.

William Bellwood, so long a hermit in the wilds of Florida, seemed glad
to leave that region.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

IN THE MOUNTAINS AGAIN.

Leaving their friends in Florida, Frank, Barney and the professor next
moved northward toward Tennessee, Frank wishing to see some of the
battlegrounds of the Civil War.

The boys planned a brief tour afoot and were soon on their way among the
Great Smoky Mountains.

Professor Scotch had no heart for a "tour afoot" through the mountains,
and so he had stopped at Knoxville, where the boys were to join him
again in two or three weeks, by the end of which period he was quite
sure they would have enough of tramping.

Frank and Barney were making the journey from Gibson's Gap to Cranston's
Cove, which was said to be a distance of twelve miles, but they were
willing to admit that those mountain miles were most disgustingly long.

They had paused to rest, midway in the afternoon, where the road curved
around a spur of the mountain. Below them opened a vista of valleys and
"coves," hemmed in by wild, turbulent-appearing masses of mountains,
some of which were barren and bleak, seamed with black chasms, above
which threateningly hung grimly beetling crags, and some of which were
robed in dense wildernesses of pine, veiling their faces, keeping them
thus forever a changeless mystery.

From their eyrie position it seemed that they could toss a pebble into
Lost Creek, which wound through the valley below, meandered for miles
amid the ranges, tunneling an unknown channel beneath the rock-ribbed
mountains, and came out again--where?

Both boys had been silent and awe-stricken, gazing wonderingly on the
impressive scen