It will hardly be necessary to inform the reader that these men were K. K. K. emissaries, who had been dispatched to secure the hunter and his dogs to aid them in the difficult enterprise which they had undertaken; and looking from one to the other of the new levies, he would have no hesitancy in making up his mind that "Barkis was willin'," and the "yaller beauties," as he was wont to term them, "spilin'" for nigger meat. These latter were composed of a dozen brace of the best Florida breed of the hybrid blood- and sleuth-hound, fat and frolicsome, wearing sleek coats of yellow, and as to size, if put to the test, the runtiest of the runts would have kicked the beam at fifty pounds. Leashed in couples, they made rapid circuits around the now galloping horsemen, filling the night with the music of their weird chorus, and falling to an indiscriminate and discordant baying whenever hog or cow or other animate thing, startled from their covert, stood still to guess at the intrusion. Three miles from the point of starting, the main company was reached, and soon afterwards, passing into the edge of the bottom, the dogs were released from their slips, and at a word from the hunter, and directing a premonitory sniff at their surroundings, sped into the darkness. For an hour or more the hunters pressed their way through the pitchy swamps, now following a scarcely distinguishable stock trail, now lightened upon by a gleam of starlight from above, and not unfrequently committed for guidance to the instincts of the animals they bestrode, without other report from the excited yelpers than was too timidly given to be accounted much worth, or called forth the response from some guttural cavity of the forest, "a lie." Reaching the banks of the river, at a point five miles below the swamp line at which their road had intersected the bottom, a halt was called, and the company sat peering into the darkness, for the first time doubtful of their enterprise, when lo! within ten feet of the rearmost file a welcome sound broke the stillness--at first low and doubtful, but gaining in volume and flowing into blended notes--one--two--three--and then a stunning, Wagnerian chorus, that lifted every horseman from his stirrups, and sent the wood echoes rolling in sonorous waves along the breast of the forest. A loud hurrah from the hunters attested their equal joy, and hue and cry being joined, the panic of pursuit began. Straight up the river bank the roaring pack held on their course, not once veering to the right nor left, nor never slackening speed, and timid horsemen, that erst had shivered if their steeds but stumbled in the darkness, now rode abreast of the panting "leader," swelling the volume of sound with their loud halloos, and leaping branch and inlet sound with the agility of the frightened deer that sped before. Even the "Ketch," usually sedate and disallowing confidences, had been momentarily thawed by the all-pervading