road, and plunged into the thick woods on the farther side. All the rest of that night and through the first part of the next day he traveled, following one path after another and keeping his general direction by a pocket compass. By noon he was so tired that if it had been to save his life he could not have gone any farther. The little stock of provisions which he had carried with him had been exhausted the night before and he threw himself on a bed of dry pine-needles under a long-leafed pine which stood on the top of a little knoll and lay there for nearly an hour until part of his strength came back. The first thing to do was to find something to eat. Pike did not dare shoot anything with his revolver, even if there had been anything to shoot, for fear of attracting the attention of Confederate pursuers or bushwhackers. It was now that the corporal's wood-craft proved to be as valuable as his scout-craft. If he were to go further, he must have food and he commenced to wander back and forth through the woods, his quick eye taking in everything on the ground or among the trees. On the other side of the knoll where he had been lying, he noticed a rotten log where the dry, punky wood had been scattered as if a hen had been scratching there. Pike commenced to look carefully all along the ground and finally just on the edge of the slope where the thick underbrush began, he nearly stepped on a large brown speckled bird so much the color of the leaves that if he had not been looking for it, he never would have discovered the nest. The bird slipped into the underbrush like a shadow, leaving behind fifteen brown, mottled partridge eggs. The corporal sat down over the nest and gulped down, one after the other, those eggs, warm from the breast of the brooding bird. As he said afterward, never had he tasted anything half so good. This was a step in the right direction, but even fifteen partridge eggs are not enough for a man who hadn't eaten for nearly thirty hours. Once again he began to prowl restlessly through the woods and this time his attention was attracted by something growing on the side of a dead maple stub. It was dark red and looked like a great tongue sticking out from the bark. To his great joy, Pike recognized it at once as the beefsteak mushroom. It was a magnificent specimen which must have weighed nearly two pounds and as he pulled it off from the tree, red drops oozed out and it looked and smelled like a big, fresh beefsteak. The corporal went down the hollow into the thickest part of the swamp and there picked an armful of perfectly dry cedar and scrub-oak twigs which burn with a clear, smokeless flame. Out of these he built a little Indian cooking fire by arranging the twigs into the form of a little tepee so that a jet of clear flame came up with hardly a sign of any smoke. It was the work of only a moment to whittle and set up a forked stick and to fasten a slab of that meaty-looking fungus on a spit fixed in the fork.