y anyhow, but the fire's all out and I can't."

"Mas' Tom!" said Joe, "I'll tell you what! I dun see a heap o' fox
grapes down dar by de creek, an' I'se gwine to git some for Miss Judie
quicker'n you kin count ten." And so saying Joe ran first to the
look-out, to make a preliminary reconnoissance. The boys rarely ever
left the trees during the daytime, and when they did so they were
careful first to satisfy themselves that there were no savages in the
neighborhood. The creek, of which Joe spoke, emptied into the river a
short distance above the root fortress, and, along its banks was a dense
mass of undergrowth, which skirted the river below, all the way to the
drift-pile. Joe had seen the grapes from the look-out, and had planned
an excursion after them. He could follow the river bank to the creek,
keeping in the bushes and moving cautiously, and if any Indians should
appear he could retreat in the same way, without discovery. Tired of raw
corn and sweet potatoes, the grapes had tempted him sorely, and it only
needed Judie's longing for a change of diet to induce him, to make this
foraging expedition.

CHAPTER X.

FIGHTING FIRE.

Before proceeding to relate the incidents which follows, it is necessary
to explain a little more fully the arrangement of the root fortress and
the drift-pile. The two trees, which were enormous ones, had originally
grown as close together as they could, and their roots had interlaced
beneath the soil. The sand in which they grew having been gradually
washed away, their great masses of roots were exposed for about fifteen
feet below the original level of the soil and as they spread out they
made two circles (one running a foot or two into the other), of about
twelve or fifteen feet in diameter. Inside of this circle of great
roots, the roots were mostly small, and the boys had cut them away with
their knives, leaving just enough of them to stop up all the holes and
obscure the view from without. The drift-pile, or hammock, as it is
sometimes called at the South, had been years in forming, being
drift-wood which had floated down the river during winter and spring
freshets, and as it had lodged against the trees it lay only on their
upper side, where it was piled up into a perpendicular wall nearly
twenty feet high. Thence it stretched away up the river for a hundred
yards or more. Now the only entrance big enough to admit a person into
the root fortress was on the side next to the