"For God's sake, Mr. Jones, wake up! We must go from here; the swamp is burning!" "Eh--who is it? Where am I? Was--I dreaming? I thought my boy was with me, and we were in the old home at Acredale." He lay quite still, staring upward with unseeing eyes. Dick's heart gave a great throb of grateful, devout thanksgiving. The madness and fever were gone. "You remember you were too worn out to go on, and Jack has gone to get food. But the swamp has caught fire, and we must move away." Jones had risen to his elbow; then, with an exclamation that sounded like an oath, to his feet, gazing on the flaming specters rising and falling, enlarging and shrinking, among the black tracery of limbs and trunks. "You ought to have waked me before," Jones said, when he had swept the scene, with sane realization in his eye. "I'm afraid we can never break through the fire. It reaches a mile or more all about us, and I--I am in no condition to move. I feel as if I had been down months with illness." "But if you could eat something you would be able to move," Dick ventured, cruelly hurt at the implied delinquency. "Eat!" Jones held up one of the luckless torches that Dirk had lighted in a circle about the mound, and began to examine the ground. "What is there to eat? Stay! By Heaven, I have it! The bushes are filled with fluttering game. There, see that! and that, and that!" As he spoke he had thrust the burning torch into a thick clump of bushes, dense and glistening as laurels, that looked like wild huckleberry. The branches were laden with birds, and in a moment be had seized three or four partridges. "What better do we need? We have salt, water, and fire. I'll prepare them. Do you keep your face well bathed, and heap up embers at the foot of that ash." Sure enough, sometimes hidden by billows of smoke, rising lazily among the burning bushes, Jones stripped the birds, spitted them on his bayonet, and, holding them in the hot coals, soon presented a well-browned portion to his companion. "I have had a good deal worse fare than this, my young friend. I have been in the West, when fire, Indians, and hunger besieged us at the same time. But we should have a poor chance here if it were not for the wet grass and the everlasting water. If we can manage to keep clear of the smoke, we shall be all right, but the smoke seems to grow denser. Where can it come from?" "Great Heavens! do you hear that? Shots--one--two! That's Jack's signal. He--he is near. He is in danger. I must go to him." Dick cried. "Listen; more shots. No, that can't be the signal. There, do you hear that? A volley. The rebels are after them, or we are near the outposts, and the two armies are skirmishing." Yes; the shots now sounded more frequently, but they seemed to be fired not far away. "It is Jack. I know it is Jack, and he is in peril. I must go to him. I can not stay here. Surely there is no danger in pushing toward the firing?"