Gray was too weary to enter upon further discussion, and the two convicts stretching themselves side by side, the former was soon dead asleep, while Lee lay meditating an infinite variety of plans. "This youth is safe," soliloquised the host of the the cave; "he must be taught to keep my counsel and his own, for although hereafter he may be rather an incumbrance to me than of use, it will not do to let him go,-- he would betray me, to a certainty. He has roughed it and seen service; though he is not clever, he has lots of pluck; on the whole, perhaps, I may make him useful, and it would be deuced lonely work to find my way across the country without any help. We must look about for arms; I saw large pieces of the wreck drifting this way after the crazy old craft went to pieces. "I wish I had not seen that girl, though. I cannot forget her; how the blood bubbled up with the foam! "The wind has changed, I suspect, but the river will be impassable to those red-jackets for days to come; we must collect our traps together without loss of time, and make ready for a start; I must do the amiable to this lad; he is a soft-hearted youth, I know. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "That fellow Tanner, I wonder if he is still trafficking up there in the kloof; he is an infernal rogue; I hope he won't turn informer--I think not, though, for I could betray him, and he knows it." He rapidly chalked out in his mind's eye a map of his plans, and as he heard the wind again veering about to all points of the compass, and at last return to its deadly quarter, from which it had breathed its fury on the hapless ship, he rubbed his hands cheerfully together. "Blow, gentle gales," said he, and as Gray answered the apostrophe with a loud snore, Lee laughed and lay down, taking care to appropriate to himself a goodly portion of the green baize coverlet. Ere long he, too, was in a dreamless sleep. CHAPTER FOUR. THE DESERTER. It is time to give our reader some further insight into the circumstances which had brought these two sleepers to their present condition, for they will occupy a prominent and peculiar part in the narrative. Although Gray is the last adventurer on the scene, I will give him the precedence, since all that is necessary to relate concerning his previous history may be comprised in the following sketch. He was the foremost boy of the village school of M--, industrious, high-spirited, and well-looking; he made slow but steady progress in his education, and his pastor entertained fair hopes touching his future prospects; but these hopes were suddenly overclouded by Gray's enlisting into a company of artillery quartered at a neighbouring town.