Turning away from the body in wild wonderment, the fugitive looked around him. The space within the tree must have been at least six feet in diameter. It had been hollowed out by time in the form of an upright cone, the apex of which was at least a dozen feet above the ground. The hole had probably been eaten out by a sort of dry rot, or perhaps by insects, for the wooden walls were not damp, nor was the corrugated floor. The only furniture was the couch of Spanish moss on which the body lay, a block of wood fashioned for a seat out of the butt end of a log, and a long paddle, bladed at both ends, which leaned upright against the wall. Looking around further, Antony noticed some little niches cut in the walls, with the handle of a hatchet sticking out of one of them. On the blade was a parcel wrapped in cotton cloth, in which he found three or four corn-cob pipes, a bundle of dried tobacco-leaf, bunches of matches, and two or three knick-knacks of no great use. Evidently Nancy had made occasional excursions from her hiding-place, for these things must all have been borrowed from the race of the taskmasters. This was still more evident as Antony pursued his observations. In another niche, he found at least half a peck of corn done up in a cloth, and in a wooden quart measure there was some more, parched. His hunger rose so suddenly and fiercely at sight of the food that he at once crammed a handful of the parched corn into his mouth, and with the measure in his hand, continued to crunch, although his throat was so swollen with his long fast that he could scarcely swallow. Continuing his search while he ate, he found in a third niche an oblong tin pan and a gourd, but in the pan, to his astonishment and delight, there was a dead opossum and a small fish. They were both fresh—Nancy must have captured them that very day. She had lived a woodman’s life in the heart of the morass, setting her fishtraps on the bayou, and catching the smaller animals in the forest. Forgetting to pursue his search further in the desire to appease his ravening hunger, Antony only paused to lay one of the pieces of cotton cloth over the face of the dead, and then set to work to rake the fire into a bed of coals, and hastily dressing the meat with his bowie-knife, broiled it, and ate with the eager voracity of a man half starved.