Branch. It was
a white canoe, and paddled by a wraith; at least, the creature who sat
within looked so grayly pale, and its eyes in its still, white face so
large and unearthly, that it seemed like a shade returned from the halls
of death.

"Why, Carl!" said Mark, in a loud, unsteady voice, breaking through his
own lethargy by main force. "It's you, Carl, isn't it?"

He tramped down to the water's edge, each step seeming to him a rod
long, and now a valley, and now a hill. The canoe touched the bank, and
Carl fell forward; not with violence, but softly, and without strength.
What little consciousness he had kept was now gone.

Dawn was coming down from above; the air was slightly stirred. The elder
man's head grew more steady, as he lifted his step-brother, gave him
brandy, rubbed his temples and chest, and then, as he came slowly back
to life again, stood thinking what he should do. They were a half-day's
journey from home, and Carl could not walk. If he attempted to carry
him, he was fearful that they should not reach pure air outside before
darkness fell again, and a second night in the thick air might be death
for both of them; but there was the boat. It had come into South Devil
in some way; by that way it should go out again. He laid Carl in one
end, putting his own coat under his head for a pillow, and then stepped
in himself, took the paddle, and moved off. Of course he must ascend the
Branch; as long as there were no tributaries, he could not err. But
presently he came to an everglade--a broadening of the stream with
apparently twenty different outlets, all equally dark and tangled. He
paddled around the border, looking first at one, then at another. The
matted water-vines caught at his boat like hundreds of hands; the great
lily-leaves slowly sank and let the light bow glide over them. Carl
slept; there was no use trying to rouse him; but probably he would
remember nothing, even if awake. The elder brother took out his compass,
and had decided by it which outlet to take, when his eye rested upon the
skin of a moccasin nailed to a cypress on the other side of the pond. It
was the mongrel's way of making a guide-post. Without hesitation,
although the direction was the exact opposite of the one he had
selected, Deal pushed the canoe across and entered the stream thus
indicated. At the next pool he found another snake-skin; and so on out
of the swamp. Twenty-five snakes had died in the cause. He came to firm
la