"Jess so," responded the man, with his accustomed twinkle. "But I think I see you oncet or twicet lookin' at 'em and sort o' tryin' to make out how come they got into that shape." The long-reiterated W's of the rail-fence had been pulled apart into separate V's, and the two sides of each of these had been drawn narrowly together, so that what had been two parallel lines of fence, with the lane between, was now a long double row of wedge-shaped piles of rails, all pointing into the woods on the left. "How did it happen?" asked Mary, with a smile of curiosity. "Didn't happen at all, 'twas jess _done_ by live men, and in a powerful few minutes at that. Sort o' shows what we're approachin' unto, as it were, eh? Not but they's plenty behind us done the same way, all the way back into Kentuck', as you already done see; but this's been done sence the last rain, and it rained night afore last." "Still I'm not sure what it means," said Mary; "has there been fighting here?" "Go up head," said the man, with a facetious gesture. "See? The fight came through these here woods, here. 'Taint been much over twenty-four hours, I reckon, since every one o' them-ah sort o' shut-up-fan-shape sort o' fish-traps had a gray-jacket in it layin' flat down an' firin' through the rails, sort o' random-like, only not much so." His manner of speech seemed a sort of harlequin patchwork from the bad English of many sections, the outcome of a humorous and eclectic fondness for verbal deformities. But his lightness received a sudden check. "Heigh-h-h!" he gravely and softly exclaimed, gathering the reins closer, as the horse swerved and dashed ahead. Two or three buzzards started up from the roadside, with their horrid flapping and whiff of quills, and circled low overhead. "Heigh-h-h!" he continued soothingly. "Ho-o-o-o! somebody lost a good nag there,--a six-pound shot right through his head and neck. Whoever made that shot killed two birds with one stone, sho!" He was half risen from his seat, looking back. As he turned again, and sat down, the drooping black sun-bonnet quite concealed the face within. He looked at it a moment. "If you think you don't like the risks we can still turn back." "No," said the voice from out the sun-bonnet; "go on." "If we don't turn back now we can't turn back at all." "Go on," said Mary; "I can't turn back." "You're a good soldier," said the man, playfully again. "You're a better one than me, I reckon; I kin turn back frequently, as it were. I've done it 'many a time and oft,' as the felleh says." Mary looked up with feminine surprise. He made a pretence of silent laughter, that showed a hundred crows' feet in his twinkling eyes.