“About twenty-five miles—­but should this screw give way, it may be less very speedily!” exclaimed the old man, almost incoherently, and applying all his strength to the loosened screw to keep it in its place.

“Let me assist!” exclaimed Glenn, springing forward.

“It’s gone!” cried the old man; “you have knocked it out! we are falling—­crushed!”

* * * * *

“That’s just what I expected,” said Joe, addressing the fawn, which had been playing with the dogs, and at length ran against Glenn’s chair so violently as to push it over.

“Oh! oh! oh!” exclaimed Glenn.

“Goodness!  Are you hurt?” asked Joe.

“Is it possible?  Am I alive, and here?” exclaimed Glenn, staring wildly round, and doubting his own identity.

“Well, I never heard a dead man talk, as I know of, before; and as to our being here, if your own eyes don’t convince you, I’ll swear to it,” said Joe.

“Did I not go up to the island this morning?” inquired Glenn.

“No,” said Joe.

“Did you not accompany me, and fire at the buck?” interrogated Glenn, resuming his seat.

“No—­I’ll be hanged if I did!” said Joe somewhat warmly.

“What have I been doing all day?”

“You’ve been sitting there fast asleep, and I presume you were dreaming.”

“Thank Heaven, it was but a dream!” exclaimed Glenn, laughing.

“A dream?” responded Joe, sitting down on his stool, and soliciting Glenn to relate it to him.  Glenn complied, and the narration was nothing more than what the incredulous reader has been staring at all this time.  But we will make amends.

CHAPTER VI.

A hunt—­A deer taken—­The hounds—­Joe makes a horrid discovery —­Sneak—­The exhumation.

“It beats all the dreams I ever heard,” said Joe, feeling his right shoulder with his left hand..

“Why do you feel your shoulder, Joe?” asked Glenn, smiling, as he recollected the many times his man had suffered by the rebound of his musket, and diverted at the grave and thoughtful expression of his features.

“It was a dream, wasn’t it?” asked Joe, with simplicity, still examining his shoulder.

“But you know there was no lead in the gun, and it could not rebound with much violence,” said Glenn.

“I’ll soon see all about it,” exclaimed Joe, springing up and running to his gun.  After a careful examination he returned to his stool beside the fire, and sat some minutes, with the musket lying across his knees, and his chin in his hand, plunged in profound meditation on the imaginary incidents which had just been related to him.  Had the dream been an ordinary one, and he not an actor in it, it might have passed swiftly from his memory; but inasmuch as the conduct imputed to him was so natural, and the expressions he was made to utter so characteristic, he could not but regard it as a vision far more significant and important than a mere freak of the brain during a moment of slumber.