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88 THE PARTISAN. CHAPTER VIII. “ There shell be joy for this. Shall we not laugh- i Laugh merrily for conquest, when it takes · The wolfdog from our throats, and yields us his ?" Tazivrs, the faithful coadjutor of the tory Huck, was on his march into the swamp before daylight. As p Humphries had anticipated, he took the path, if so it might be called, on which the ambuscade had been laid for him. He might not have_done so, had he dreamed for an instant of the existence in this quarter of such a body of men as that now preparing to receive him. Looking on his object, however, simply as the arrest of Frampton, and the scouring _of the swamp of such stragglers besides as might have been led for shelter into its recesses, he adopted the route which was obviously most accessible, and most likely, there- fore, to be resorted to by the merely skulking discon- tent. The half·military eye, looking out for an enemy in any respect equal, would have either studiously avoided the ridge over which Travis now presumed to ride, or would have adopted some better precautions than- he had troubled himself to take. It was naturally a strong defile, well calculated for an easy defence, as only a smallforce could possibly be oi` use upon it. ‘ But two persons could ride abreast in the prescribed direction, and then only with great difficulty and by slow movement; for little gullies and fissures continu- ally intersected thepath, which was circuitous and winding, and, if not always covered with water and swamp, quite as diiiicult to overcome, from its luxuriant growth of umbrage. Though anold traveller in such fastnesses, these obstructions were in no sort pleasant to the leader of the party, who, being a notorious grumbler, accompanied every step which he took with