About midnight that long looked for trail was reached. It was a perfect tree-lined avenue, dark as blackness itself, and so we trudged along—Mac as the advance guard, and I carefully leading the broncho. We had not advanced a mile before Mac stepped upon a dry poplar limb that had been placed across the road by the Indians as a signal to their fellows, and it snapped like a pistol. Mac sprang I don’t know how many feet in the air, and I leaned against the broncho and, notwithstanding the seriousness of the occasion, laughed till the tears came. It was a wonderful leap. He assumed all kinds of postures in that jump; it was positively the best bit of ground and lofty tumbling I had ever seen, even in a circus. I didn’t laugh long, though, because as we proceeded through a little opening, to the right I saw a dim camp fire, around which it didn’t require much imagination to see figures flitting. Mac could see this one too, and we watched it growing larger and larger. In whispered consultation, I suggested that we abandon the broncho outfit and take to the woods on the left. “But we can’t,” remonstrated Mac. “Why not?” I whisperingly wanted to know. “Because it’s Peter Hourie’s buckboard, and I told him I’d bring it back.” “Oh, hang,”—I think that’s the word I used—“hang Peter Hourie’s buckboard.” But Mac was obdurate and we mournfully and noiselessly moved on. Then came another glimpse of that camp fire, and the awful import of the old saying that silence is golden flashed upon me. Then I laughed again—heartily and boisterously. The confounded old camp fire we had conjured up was only the moon rising! At three o’clock in the morning, we passed through a spot which I afterwards learned was to have been the gathering place of the rebels at that hour. Fortunately the meeting had not materialized through some providential misunderstanding in their orders. As the sun’s rays came streaming from the east we reached the _Northcote_, only to be welcomed by the gruff demand as to what on earth—well, we’ll say it was earth—kept us so long, and that’s the sort of thanks Mac and I got for our trouble. Afterwards, my companion confided in me that, for some reason or other, he couldn’t see very well at night. Others told me he was blind as a bat in darkness. That was some consolation. A Naval Battle in the West