was a strange, muffled thunder, as if the partridges were drumming in
celebration of nature's victory over the son of her immemorial
enslavers. And back at the little plantation, where white men and black
were hastily searching the fields and hedges in alarm, a mother's heart
was breaking for her missing child.

Hours passed, and then the little sleeper rose to his feet. The chill of
the evening was in his limbs, the fear of the gloom in his heart. But he
had rested, and he no longer wept. With some blind instinct which
impelled to action he struggled through the undergrowth about him and
came to a more open ground--on his right the brook, to the left a
gentle acclivity studded with infrequent trees; over all, the gathering
gloom of twilight. A thin, ghostly mist rose along the water. It
frightened and repelled him; instead of recrossing, in the direction
whence he had come, he turned his back upon it, and went forward toward
the dark inclosing wood. Suddenly he saw before him a strange moving
object which he took to be some large animal--a dog, a pig--he could not
name it; perhaps it was a bear. He had seen pictures of bears, but knew
of nothing to their discredit and had vaguely wished to meet one. But
something in form or movement of this object--something in the
awkwardness of its approach--told him that it was not a bear, and
curiosity was stayed by fear. He stood still and as it came slowly on
gained courage every moment, for he saw that at least it had not the
long, menacing ears of the rabbit. Possibly his impressionable mind was
half conscious of something familiar in its shambling, awkward gait.
Before it had approached near enough to resolve his doubts he saw that
it was followed by another and another. To right and to left were many
more; the whole open space about him was alive with them--all moving
toward the brook.