CONFUSED.

The two Indians who had startled Sam, were on the point of entering the old dwelling house, and seemingly were unaccompanied by any others. Sam happened fortunately to be standing in shadow, and they passed without seeing him. But what was he now to do? He was at the back of the house, and a high picket fence around the place made it impossible for him to escape by the front-way, towards which the savages had gone. Looking through the door-way, he saw that the pair had passed through the room nearest him and into the adjoining apartment. He knew that other Indians were in the neighborhood, and that a dozen of them might wander into the enclosure at any moment. Resolving upon a bold manoeuvre, he stepped lightly into the rear room of the house, and climbed up inside the wide mouthed chimney. Whether the Indians heard him or not he never knew, but at any rate he was none too soon in hiding, for he had hardly cleared the fireplace in his ascent when four or five savages came into the room and began to demolish the few articles of furniture left in the house. They had got whiskey somewhere, and having drank freely were even noisier than white men get under the influence of strong drink. They remained but a short time, when, setting fire again to the half-burned house, they left the place yelling as savages only can. Sam escaped as soon as he could from his uncomfortable quarters and made his way to the grove. Mounting his horse he rode away in the direction of the root fortress, keeping in the woods as well as he could and taking every precaution to avoid coming suddenly upon savages.

As he rode only at night, the Indians' almost universal habit of building camp-fires wherever they stop for the night, helped him to avoid them. When morning came he sought a place deep in the forest, when he turned his horse loose to graze all day, while he slept at some distance from the animal, so that the noise of the beast's stamping and browsing might not lead to the discovery of his own whereabouts.

As the evening of the second day of his return came round, Sam found himself genuinely sick. His foot and leg were much inflamed, and the excitement of the preceding night, together with his continued exposure to the drenching dews of the Southern autumn, had brought back his fever with increased violence, and a very brief experiment convinced him that he could not go further that night. He mounted his horse, but had ridden less than a mile when he felt a giddiness coming over him and found it necessary to abandon the effort to ride that night. He could hardly see, and the pain in his head, neck, back and limbs was excruciating. He dismounted and threw himself down on the ground without taking the trouble even to separate himself from his horse. The truth is, Sam had what they call in South Carolina country fever, a high type of malarial fever, which stupefies and benumbs its victim almost as soon as it attacks him. The dews in the far South, especially in the fall, are so heavy that the water will drip and even stream off the foliage of the trees all night, and Sam had been drenched every night during both his journeys, having no fire by which to warm himself or dry his clothes. Even without this drenching the poisonous exhalations of the swamps and woods would doubtless have given him the fever, and as it was he had it very severely. He laid down again almost under his horse's feet and fell into a sort of stupor. He knew that his fever required treatment, and that it would rapidly sap his strength, and the thought came to him: What if he should die there and never get back to the tree fortress? He was too sick to care for himself, but the thought of little Judie haunted his dreams, and he was seized with a semi-delirious impulse to remount his horse and ride straight away to the hiding-place in which he had left her, regardless of Indians, and of everything else. He dreamed a dozen times that he was doing this, and finally, when morning came, he forgot all about the danger of travelling by daylight, and mounting his horse in a confused, half-delirious way, rode straight out of the woods towards the open country, which he had hitherto so carefully avoided.