“Whew! that’s what I call going some!” exclaimed the astonished boy, as he surveyed the battlefield ruefully; “and I reckon I ought to feel thankful they didn’t get a chance to try their sharp teeth on me. I owe a heap to this faithful gun of mine; and after this nothing will ever tempt me to sell the same, or give it away. It ought to be handed down to my grandchildren, and kept with a red ribbon tied on the same, hanging from the wall; like that old Revolutionary musket is in our house, which was once owned by my ancestor, who fought under General Marion, the Swamp Fox. Oh! but I’m hungry, though; and that reminds me my troubles ain’t over yet by a jugfull. I could eat a petrified loaf of bread, or even a—a—well, a muskrat; and I used to think they were the limit when I saw that trapper in the marsh cook one, and call it musquash, fine and dandy.” The prospect for breakfast certainly looked pretty slender to poor Billie. He stared hard all around him, as the light grew stronger, and a rosy flush told where the coming sun would presently break above the horizon, to start another hot day. Not a thing in sight was there, that gave promise of succor. As on the previous day, one could not see any great distance accurately, on account of a peculiar haze; and this prevented him from making out the hilly ranges that he felt sure must lie to the north, and not such a tremendous distance away either. So Billie heaved a big sigh, as he reduced his girth by drawing in his belt. “If this keeps on I’ll soon be as thin as a living skeleton,” he told himself, as he counted the remaining holes in the leather, and figured on how he would look when he had by degrees reached the end of the string. Gathering up his blanket, and making as small a bundle of it as possible, he shouldered this, and then set his face toward the Promised Land, which, in his case, lay directly to the north. His little compass again came in handy, and showed him his course. Every few minutes the anxious boy would consult it feverishly, for he was dreadfully afraid that he might wander away from his prearranged route, and get to making that fatal circle he had heard lost people usually traveled. When not staring at the face of the small, brassbound compass Billie was casting his eyes ahead, and trying with might and main to make out something hopeful there, the dim outlines of rocky elevations perhaps, anything to break the horrible monotony of that dreary sandy waste of which he was already so heartily sick that he hoped he might never set eyes on another desert in all his life. And of course the more he considered his deplorable condition, the worse his sensation of hunger became. It seemed to Billie that he could not have eaten much of anything for a whole week, and he feared he would soon become so weak from starvation that it must be impossible for him to put one foot in front of another.