Page:The Partisan, v1.djvu/71

 l", 68 rim mxrisniv. _ . · • CHAPTER VI. " Stretch out thy wand before thou set’st thyfoot; "I‘is a dim way before thee, and the trees Of bygone centuries have spread their arms Athwart tléyoiath. Now make thy footmgsure; And now, cheer us, for the tm is done. Nxoirr had fairly set in——a clear starlight night— before the three set forthupon their proposedadven- ture. To Major Singleton, who was a native of the middle country, and had lived heretofore almost exclu- sively in it, the path they now travelled was entirely unknown. It was necessary, therefore, to move on slowly and with duo circumspection. But for this, the party would have advanced with as much speed as if they were pursuing the common highway ; for, to the other two, accustomed all their lives to the woodland cover and the tangled recesses of the swamps, their present route, uncleared, in close thicket growth, and diverging as it continually did, was, nevertheless, no mystery. Though delayed, however, by this cause, the delay was much less than might have been expected ; for Singleton, however ignorant of the immediate ground over which they sped, was yet thoroughly ' versed in forest life, and had traversed the longer and denser swamps of the Santee, a task,`though similar, · infinitely more diilicultand extensive than the one now before him. After a little while, therefore, when his eye grew more accustomed to the peculiar shades about him, he spurred his good steed forward with much more readiness than at their first setting out, and it was not long before the yielding of the soil beneath his hoofs and the occasional plush of the water, toge-