by and by, I judged. Well, I went fooling along in the deep woods till I judged I warn't far from the foot of the island.  I had my gun along, but I hadn't shot nothing; it was for protection; thought I would kill some game nigh home. About this time I mighty near stepped on a good-sized snake, and it went sliding off through the grass and flowers, and I after it, trying to get a shot at it. I clipped along, and all of a sudden I bounded right on to the ashes of a camp fire that was still smoking. My heart jumped up amongst my lungs.  I never waited for to look further, but uncocked my gun and went sneaking back on my tiptoes as fast as ever I could.  Every now and then I stopped a second amongst the thick leaves and listened, but my breath come so hard I couldn't hear nothing else.  I slunk along another piece further, then listened again; and so on, and so on.  If I see a stump, I took it for a man; if I trod on a stick and broke it, it made me feel like a person had cut one of my breaths in two and I only got half, and the short half, too. When I got to camp I warn't feeling very brash, there warn't much sand in my craw; but I says, this ain't no time to be fooling around.  So I got all my traps into my canoe again so as to have them out of sight, and I put out the fire and scattered the ashes around to look like an old last year's camp, and then clumb a tree. I reckon I was up in the tree two hours; but I didn't see nothing, I didn't hear nothing--I only _thought_ I heard and seen as much as a thousand things.  Well, I couldn't stay up there forever; so at last I got down, but I kept in the thick woods and on the lookout all the time. All I could get to eat was berries and what was left over from breakfast. By the time it was night I was pretty hungry.  So when it was good and dark I slid out from shore before moonrise and paddled over to the Illinois bank--about a quarter of a mile.  I went out in the woods and cooked a supper, and I had about made up my