E-text prepared by Roger Frank, Darleen Dove, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) CHRISTOPHER HIBBAULT, ROADMAKER by MARGUERITE BRYANT New York Grosset & Dunlap Publishers Copyright, 1908, by Duffield and Company Set up and electrotyped; published January, 1909 Reprinted March, August, October, December, 1909 May, August, October, 1910 _To V. B. and M. B. this Book with my love 1906-1908_ _Your paths were two when first the tale began And now are one, and still with every year Love, the Divine Roadmaker, works His will. And of these paths he makes one perfect Road Which those who follow after shall find smooth And with more easy steps shall seek the Dawn._ Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker CHAPTER I It was a hot July day, set in a sky of unruffled blue, with sharp shadows across road and field, and a wind that had little coolness in it playing languidly over the downland. The long white dusty road kept its undeviating course eastward over hill and dale, through hamlet and town, till it was swallowed up in the mesh-work of ways round London, sixty-three miles away according to the mile-stone by which a certain small boy clad in workhouse garb was loitering. He had read the inscription many times and parcelled out the sixty-three miles into various days' journeys, but never succeeded in bringing it within divisionable distance of the few pennies which found their way into his pockets. His precocious little head carried within it too bitter memories of hungry days, and too many impressions of the shifts and contrivances by which fortune's votaries bamboozle from that fickle Goddess a meagre living, to adventure on the journey unprepared. Moreover, Mr. and Mrs. Moss of the Whitmansworth Union were not unkind, and meals were regular, so he did not run away from the house that had opened its doors to him and an exhausted mother six months ago. But he still dreamt of London as the desideratum of his fondest hopes, and that, in spite of a black terror crouching there and carefully nurtured by the poor mother in the days of their wanderings. He saw it all through a haze of people and experiences, of friends and foes, and it was the Place of Liberty. Therefore, when escape was possible from the somewhat easy rule of the Union, he hurried away to the mile-stone on the "Great Road," as it was called about here. The stone with its clear distinct black lettering, seemed to bring him nearer London, and he would spend his time contentedly flinging pebbles into the river of dust at his feet, or planning out in his active little mind what he would do when old Granny Jane's prophecy came true.