Presently a new sound!--a crashing iteration--assailed the air. A frantic crowd was beating the bushes about the margin of the lake and the verges of the almost impenetrable cane-brake. Here, however, there could be no hope of discovery, and suddenly a cry arose, unanimously iterated the next instant, “Fire the cane-brake! Fire the cane-brake!” For so late had come the rise of the river, so persistent had been the winter's drought, so delayed the usual inundation of the swamp, that the vegetation, dry as tinder, caught the sparks instantly, and the fierce expedient to force the fugitive to leave his supposed shelter in the brake, a vast woodland conflagration, was added to the terror of the scene. The flames flared frantically upward from the cane, itself twenty feet in height, and along its dense columns issued forth jets like the volleyings of musketry from serried ranks of troops, the illusion enhanced by continuous sharp, rifle-like reports, the joints of the growth exploding as the air within was liberated by the heat of the fire. All around this blazing Gehenna were swiftly running figures of men applying with demoniac suggestion torches here and there, that a new area might be involved. Others were mounted, carrying flaming torches aloft, the restive horses plunging in frantic terror of the fiery furnace in the depths of the brake, the leaping sheets of flame, the tumultuous clouds of smoke. Oh, a terrible fate, had the forlorn fugitive sought refuge here! Let us hope that no poor denizen of the brake, bear or panther or fox, dazed by the tumult and the terror, forgot which way to flee! But human energies must needs fail as time wears on. Nerves of steel collapse at last. The relinquishment of the quest came gradually; the crowd thinned; now and again the sound of rapid hoof-beats told of homeward-bound horsemen; languid groups stood and talked dully here and there, dispersing to follow a new suggestion for a space, them ultimately disappearing; even the fire began to die ont, and the site of the cane-break had become a dense, charred mass, as far as eye could reach, with here and there a vague blue flicker where some bed of coals could yet send up a jet, when at length the pale day, slow and aghast, came peering along the levels to view the relics of the strange events that had betided in the watches of the night.