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The horse was lathered and his sides heaved wearily as they pounded across the bridge over the creek which was the outlet to the swamp and emerged from a patch of woods in sight of Bristow's farm buildings. The house was set on a little hill among cleared fields and was in other respects much like the squire's own house except that it was smaller and not so well painted.

Dixon showed no inclination to accompany the sledges, and when they were gone he and Melisse began taking walks in the forest, when the sun was high and warm. It was on one of these days that Jean had gone along the edge of the caribou swamp that lay between the barrens and the higher forest.

They slept under the trees again, putting the strips of bear meat in the house to secure them from marauders of the air, and awoke the next morning to find the swamp still improving. Powerful factors in the improvement were two ducks and a fat wild goose caught in the snares, and, with more fish from Silent Tom, they had a variety for breakfast.

Terrified with the apprehension that the whole English force was upon them, the Indians plunged like affrighted deer into the deeper recesses of the swamp, leaving their kettles boiling and their meat roasting upon their wooden spits. But they were surrounded, and there was no escape. The following scene, described by Captain Church himself, gives one an idea of the nature of this warfare.

Still they snoozed on; and soon afterwards, hearing the same squalling sounds again, I stole forth in the bleak dawn to see what I could discover. When I had pushed through the swamp of thick cedar that lay between the camp and the pond, I beheld a goose flapping its wings and squalling scarcely more than a stone's throw away.

The wild geese flying South sent their faint carol from the clouds the swamp sparrow twittered, and the still copse was stirred by the silent croak of some wandering wild turkey, or the far forest made most musical with that sound which the master of Wharncliffe Lodge delighted in, the "belling of the hart."

"They were taken out at dawn. Do not be alarmed. It was the swamp fever, which is not what you say? catching." "Humph! Sort of a reg'lar thing to die of fever here, hey?" Thomaz shrugged as if hearing a foolish question. "Si. Swamp fever, yellow fever, smallpox, beriberi to-day we live, to-morrow we are dead." "True for ye.

"Jest wait here a spell," she said, rapidly. "I won't be a minute!" Shortly afterward, two swiftly moving, shadowy figures emerged from the little white gate and turned into a dark lane made more gloomy by overhanging maples. This was the shortest route to Burnham's swamp. Copernicus was now more hopeful.

Joe Hawkridge still argued that Blackbeard had whisked it away in a cloud of smoke and brimstone. The unhappy Mr. Peter Forbes suggested: "What say you, lads, to dropping down to the sloop for a respite from this accursed swamp? There we can take comfort and discuss what is to be done next."

To explain them, we must suppose that the ground went on sinking till the sea covered the whole place where once the swamp had been, and then sea-sand would be thrown down over the clay and gradually pressed down by the weight of new sand above, till it formed solid sandstone and our coal-bed became buried deeper and deeper in the earth.