Chagrined, he slowly turned to quit the post he had hitherto kept; but--fresh horror!--whither? The sun, as he now for the first time considered, had been travelling through the sky during many long hours, and stood in a totally different quarter from that which it occupied in the morning. Should he now find his way back?--might he not turn off too much either to his right or left? The bare idea raised his hair on end. Snatching up the gun, he sprang in great haste over the narrow tongue of dry ground, and over the other side into the swamp again, in order not to lose any more valuable time, and waded, as fast as his feet would carry him, right through it, with such exertion and haste that the water often splashed right over him, and in less than a quarter of an hour's march he was completely wet through. But his fears seemed to have been verified, for he ought long since, as he firmly believed, to have reached the spot where the trees felled by the settlers were lying, and yet the swamp did not come to an end; for although Von Schwanthal saw dry land on his left, he would not on any account deviate from what he considered the right course. He now felt the water grow more shallow, and immediately afterwards found himself upon dry ground--ran over it--came to one of the innumerable little muddy brooks, which cross the country in all directions--dashed through it without pausing to consider; found himself up to his arm-pits in water--climbed as well as he could out on the other side--and, being now firmly convinced that he must have lost his way, as he knew nothing of this brook, he began to call out with all his might for help. "Mercy on us! what's the matter?" asked the little tailor, who stood close beside him without his having noticed it,--"why, you're on dry ground again." "Oh, Meier, are you here?" exclaimed Von Schwanthal, delighted; "why, there's the shoemaker, too. You haven't--surely, you haven't lost yourselves, have you?" "Lost ourselves? no, no!" laughed the little fellow; "we are too wide awake for that; I, for instance, never go further away from the rest than I can reach with my hand one of them, at all events. But what did you halloo so for?" "Oh, I--I--haven't you seen a stag come past here?" asked Von Schwanthal, taking up his cue, for he was ashamed to let the people see that he had been frightened. "I only called 'Look out!' in case any one might have been out here with a gun." "It sounded exactly like 'Help!'" said the shoemaker, grinning, and giving the tailor a sly push with the crosscut-saw, which rested on a slight oak, felled by Charles's hands, lying between them. "Have you shot nothing?--there was a report." "I--I wounded a stag," answered the sportsman; "but there was so much water on the spot, that the tracks could not be followed, I couldn't trace the blood; and, as I had no dog, why----"