mayne in the lead. By the magic of the moonlight the forest, which before had been hideous and menacing in its blackness, was transformed to soft and silvery loveliness. Through this shimmering beauty they passed in silence, their horses' hoofbeats muffled by the thick carpet of pine straw covering the ground. A light breeze blew in their faces, so that their scent was not wafted on ahead of them; and again and again they came within sight of grazing deer.
Once, Jolie, glancing down a dim forest aisle between rows of column-like pines, saw a great beast that was like a lioness sitting on its haunches, staring fixedly with eyes that were glowing coals—a panther, Lachlan called it; and once, just in front of them, there was a sudden commotion in the moonlit woods, a bellowing as of bulls, a tossing of sharp, curved horns, a confusion of big, dark bodies lurching upward from the ground and rocking away amid the crowding trees. At this she cried out in excitement, believing that she was looking for the first time on that half-fabulous beast, the buffalo, but Lachlan laughed the notion away.
"Black cattle," he said, "wild black cattle, strays from the plantations. There are hundreds in these low country woods. We'll see no buffalo till we have passed farther inland."
In general they travelled northward, but often they made wide circles to avoid impassable swamps. The forest seemed endless.
At dawn they came to a deep, narrow creek flowing
