oul.

As this idea increased upon her fancy she heard the very words these
warring powers hurled to and fro, as now the myriads of the angels
cheered together, "Hallelujah! Hallelujah!" and, like an army of
spiders, assembled in the swamp, a deep refrain of "Hell, hell, hell!"
groaned back.

"Hallelujah!" "Hell!" "Hallelujah!"

She found herself crying, as she stumbled on, "Hallelujah! hallelujah!"

The swamp increased in depth and solemnity as they drew near the rushing
sluices of the Pocomoke, and kept along them, the trail being now a mere
ditch and chain of floating logs where no vehicle could pass, and the
man himself seemed frightened as he led the way from trunk to float and
puddle to corduroy, sometimes balancing himself on a revolving log, or
again plunging nearly to his waist in vegetable muck; but the
light-footed girl behind had the footstep of a bird, and hopped as if
from twig to twig, and seemed to slide where he would sink; and the man
often turned in terror, when he had fallen headlong from some
treacherous perch, to see her slender feet, in crescent sandals, play in
the moonlit jungle like hands upon a harp.

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 mos