This information made our friends more cautious, and it is well they were so, for, towards evening, several mounted men armed with guns were seen by them upon the main road leading to Aiken; their evident purpose being to intercept the fugitives, of whose presence in their neighborhood the boy had made report. Forewarned was forearmed, and our hero and his companion determined to give the enemy a wide berth. Again, therefore, plunging into the recesses of a neighboring swamp, they went quietly to sleep, and slept until midnight, when Glazier awoke to see thousands of stars glittering through the spectral branches of the pines, and away off toward the western horizon, a flood of silvery effulgence from the waning moon. Entranced by the beauty of the scene, he awoke his comrade, and all around being buried in profound silence, they proceeded on their way. It was not long before they found themselves upon the outskirts of the village of Aiken, and no practicable path upon either side presenting itself, but one resource remained, namely, to steal cautiously through, although this involved the imminent risk of discovery. On, therefore, they walked until they came to the border of the village. They found it dumb with sleep. Not a sound disturbed the silence. The very dogs, their usually sleepless foes, appeared for once to have become wearied and gone to rest. There is something solemn about a sleeping town. The solitude of the swamp and wood is solemn; but the ghostly stillness of a town, where all its inhabitants lie buried in sleep, and no sign or sound proclaims the presence of life in man or beast, is of so weird a character as to produce a sensation of awe, akin to fear. The shadows that enwrapped them as they came beneath the buildings, and the fitful gleams of moonlight that fell upon them when streets were crossed, seemed not lights and shadows at all, but strange, intangible things. And when at length they reached the outer limit of the village, and the distant woods were seen by the moon's rays, our travellers felt as if they had been wandering in a graveyard, where the tombs were houses, and they wished they were in the swamp again, where such uncanny fancies never troubled them. When the toad and lizard, snakes and other loathsome things, crawled around their swampy bed, they cared nothing; but the dead silence of a cloudless night, brooding over a swarm of their fellow-beings, brought with it a feeling they could not account for or understand; and therefore it was with a sense of great relief they found themselves at the outer edge of the town.