and I will follow.'

'All right, brother,' said Toby, 'quick's our play; only lets
keep close together, that's all;' and so saying with a bound like
a young roe, he cleared a brook which ran across our path, and
rushed forward with a quick step.

When we arrived within a short distance of the ridge, we were
stopped by a mass of tall yellow reeds, growing together as
thickly as they could stand, and as tough and stubborn as so many
rods of steel; and we perceived, to our chagrin, that they
extended midway up the elevation we proposed to ascend.

For a moment we gazed about us in quest of a more practicable
route; it was, however, at once apparent that there was no
resource but to pierce this thicket of canes at all hazards. We
now reversed our order of march, I, being the heaviest, taking
the lead, with a view of breaking a path through the obstruction,
while Toby fell into the rear.

Two or three times I endeavoured to insinuate myself between the
canes, and by dint of coaxing and bending them to make some
progress; but a bull-frog might as well have tried to work a
passage through the teeth of a comb, and I gave up the attempt in
despair.

Half wild with meeting an obstacle we had so little anticipated,
I threw myself desperately against it, crushing to the ground the
canes with which I came in contact, and, rising to my feet again,
repeated the action with like effect. Twenty minutes of this