though to see whether I were
watching him or not.

We had ridden more than an hour, and the strength which the whisky had
given me was fast failing, so that I expected each moment to fall from
my horse, when suddenly I caught sight of a kind of rude hedge, and
almost immediately afterwards the wall of a small blockhouse became
visible. A faint cry of joy escaped me, and I endeavoured, but in vain,
to give my horse the spur. My guide turned round, fixed his wild eyes
upon me, and spoke in a threatening tone.

"You are impatient, man! impatient, I see. You think now, perhaps"----

"I am dying," was all I could utter. In fact, my senses were leaving me
from exhaustion, and I really thought my last hour was come.

"Pooh! dyin'! One don't die so easy. And yet--d----n!--it might be
true."

He sprang off his horse, and was just in time to catch me in his arms as
I fell from the saddle. A few drops of whisky, however, restored me to
consciousness. My guide replaced me upon my mustang, and after passing
through a potato ground, a field of Indian corn, and a small grove of
peach-trees, we found ourselves at the door of the blockhouse.

I was so utterly helpless, that my strange companion was obliged to lift
me off my horse, and carry me into the dwelling. He sat me down upon a
bench, passive and powerless as an infant. Strange to say, however, I
was never better able to observe all that passed around me, than during
the few hours of bodily debility that succeeded my immersion in the
Jacinto. A blow with a reed would have knocked me off my seat, but my
mental faculties, instead of participating in this weakness, seemed
sharpened to an unusual degree of acuteness.

The blockhouse in which we now were, was of the poorest possible
description; a mere log hut, consisting of one room, that served as
kitchen, sitting-room, and bedchamber. The door of rough planks swung
heavily upon two hooks that fitted into iron rings, and formed a clumsy
substitute for hinges; a wooden latch and heavy bar served to secure it;
windows, properly speaking, there were none, but in their stead a few
holes covered with dirty oiled paper; the floor was of clay, stamped
hard and dry in the middle of the hut, but out of which, at the sides of
the room, a crop of rank grass was growing, a foot or more high. In one
corner stood a clumsy bedstead, in another a sort of table or counter,
on which were half a dozen drinking glasses of various sizes and
patt