They came to a lazy brook, stealing out of a marsh. In the mud by its side was the slough where a wild boar had wallowed. The solitude and savageness of the place shot a fresh life through Morton's failing veins. The sense came upon him that his fate was now in his own hands; the resolve that he would never be taken alive. He called Max to stop. "Have you any weapon besides your bayonet?" Max produced a pair of pistols, which he had contrived to appropriate; and, keeping one of them, handed the other to Morton. It was dusk before they stopped, in the depth of the woods, on a grassy spot, shut in by a tall cliff, and a growth of old beeches, oaks, and evergreens. Morton threw himself on the ground. Max made a fire, by plugging up the touch-hole of his flint-lock pistol, and placing in the pan, by way of tinder, a piece of cotton rag, rubbed with a little wet gunpowder. Morton roused himself, and breaking off small branches of the firs and spruces, piled them for beds. The loaf which the jailer had brought for his next day's meal, with some more solid viands which Max produced, served them for supper; and, for drink, they scooped water in their hands from the neighboring brook. It grew dark, and as they sat together by the fire, the red light flared against the jagged rock, the shaggy fir boughs, and knotty limbs of the oaks. It seemed to Morton as if time and space were done away; as if the prison were a dream; and as if, once more on some college ramble, he were seated by a camp fire in the familiar forests of America. But instead of a vagabond Indian, or the hardy face of a Penobscot lumberman, the flame fell on the frogged uniform and long, waxed moustache of Corporal Max, as he sat cross-legged, like a Turk, on the pile of evergreens. As Morton looked on his manly face, and thought of the boundless debt he owed him, his heart warmed towards him, and he poured forth his gratitude as well as he could, in the patchwork of languages which Max himself had used as his medium of communication. The latter soon fell asleep, and lay snoring lustily. With his companion sleep was impossible. He lay watching the stars, and the dull folds of smoke that half hid them, listening to the wind, and the mysterious sounds of the forest, and, as the night drew on, shivering with the damp and cold. His mind was a maze of confused emotions, suspense, and delight, hope, and fear, mingling in a dreamy chaos; till at last fatigue prevailed, and he, too, fell asleep; a sleep haunted by hideous images, yet with its intervals of deep peace and repose.