hunt a stag. The captain alone seemed to have no heart for the work, and the orders he gave betrayed a considerable amount of indecision. We began our march, however. Unfortunately, the darkness of the night made our progress very slow. At times, and during a short halt, one of the horsemen alighted and applied his ear to the ground, but not a sound was heard but the sighing of the wind. The rocky ground, carefully examined by the light of a cigar, seemed incapable of bearing even the slightest impress. Guided, however, by an inexplicable instinct, the soldiers did not appear to doubt but that the robbers had passed that way. The gravel soon ceased to crunch beneath our tread; we were now on softer ground. We had at last some chance of discovering the trace of the men or animals which had followed that road. Half of us alighted, and by the light of our cigars, or sparks from flint and steel, began examining with the utmost minuteness every bit of moss or bare earth on the path. Tracks crossed one. another in every direction; and at the end of a few minutes, a soldier uttered a cry of joy, and pointed out to us the distinct impress of the two feet of a mule. One of the marks showed that the animal had been newly shod, from the deeper dent made in the soft ground. This was, assuredly, the traces of one of the mules of the convoy that we had been forced to shoe that very morning. At this time we were marching only at random, and our delight at this discovery was intense. The trail was followed till it conducted us to a vast open clearing, a sort of square, from which several paths struck off similar to the one we had followed. There we were completely at fault.
A considerable time had now elapsed since we be-
