Page:They who walk in the wilds, (IA theywhowalkinwil00robe).pdf/103

 The frightened Poke, daring at last to glance back over his shoulder, was horrified to see a black horned shape, looking to him as big as a horse, dancing diabolically about the fire, and flapping an awful, dusky wing. In his panic he threw overboard his last bottle, and it was months before he would taste another drop, or steal so much as a potato.

Tiring at last of his antics with the blanket and cheered by a feeling that he had once more come in contact with humanity, Bill lay down beside the rock and gazed at the dying fire until he fell asleep.

It was early in the following afternoon when Bill came upon the first signs of human habitation in the wilderness. Forced by a deep and still bayou, or backwater, to turn his steps far inland, he traversed a low ridge clothed with beech-trees, and saw before him a pleasant valley, with the roofs of a log cabin and a low barn showing in the distance. There were several wide patches of roughly tilled clearing, with blackened, half-burned stumps sticking up through the crops of potato and buckwheat. Immediately before him was a very crude but substantial snake-fence of brushwood and poles, enclosing a rugged pasture. And in that pasture was a sight that rejoiced his soul.

Among the low green bushes and grey boulders