With quickened steps, and with many of the same signs of excitement manifested by a hound when the trail grows hot, Du Chien followed along this hedge-like line of underbrush, and at its farther end stopped. There, within three feet of where the steep bank ran into the water, which seemed to be of great depth, was an opening in the hedge. He slipped cautiously through it, and we followed him in silence. It was a little garden in the heart of the swamp, lying between the hills and the water. At the apex of the V-shaped valley was a miserable cabin with some fruit trees growing round about it. We gazed upon the scene with profound astonishment. “Do you know anything of this place, Captain Martas?” said I, in a low tone. “No,” said he; “several years ago one of my fieldhands, a gigantic Abyssinian, was whipped and ran away to the swamp; I never followed him, and have never seen him since, although every now and then I heard of him by the report of the negroes on the plantation; I suppose he has been living somewhere in the swamp ever since, and, unless this is his home, I can not imagine how such a place came to be here.” “The nigger is there,” said Du Chien. “If there are a dozen of them I can tell the right one by the smell,” and again he put the old handkerchief to his nose. “If it is old Todo,” said Captain Martas, “he is a powerful and desperate man, and we had better be cautious.” We formed a line, and slowly and cautiously approached. We had got within ten or twelve feet of his door, when we saw a gigantic, half-clad negro spring from the floor, gaze out at us an instant with fierce, startled eyes, and then, with a yell like that of some wild beast roused up in its lair, he seized an axe which stood just at the door, and, whirling it around his head with savage fury, darted straight at Captain Martas. It seemed to me that the huge, black form was actually in the air, springing toward the object of its hatred and fear, when one of the soldiers sent a ball from his revolver crushing through old Todo’s skull. With a savage, beastly cry, the huge bulk fell headlong to the earth. “It is a pity,” said Martas; “I wished to burn the black devil alive.”