"Well, then," resumed Hickory, "I make my way along the path I find there--run it at right angles to the one leading up to the glade--till I come to a stony ledge covered with blackberry bushes. (A very cleverly drawn blackberry patch that, Byrd.) Here I fear I shall have to pause." "Why?" "Because, deuce take me if I can remember where the path runs after that." "But I can. A big hemlock-tree stands just at the point where the woods open again. Make for that and you will be all right." "Good enough; but it's mighty rough travelling over that ledge, and I shall have to go at a foot's pace. The stones are slippery as glass, and a fall would scarcely be conducive to the final success of my scheme." "I will make the path serpentine." "That will be highly expressive." "And now, what next?" "The Foresters' Road, Byrd, upon which I ought to come about this time. Run it due east and west--not that I have surveyed the ground, but it looks more natural so--and let the dotted line traverse it toward the right, for that is the direction in which I shall go." "It's done," said Byrd. "Well, description fails me now. All I know is, I come out on a hillside running straight down to the river-bank and that the highway is visible beyond, leading directly to the station; but the way to get to it----" "I will show you," interposed Byrd, mapping out the station and the intervening river with a few quick strokes of his dexterous pencil. "You see this point where you issue from the woods? Very good; it is, as you say, on a hillside overlooking the river. Well, it seems unfortunate, but there is no way of crossing that river at this point. The falls above and below make it no place for boats, and you will have to go back along its banks for some little distance before you come to a bridge. But there is no use in hesitating or looking about for a shorter path. The woods just here are encumbered with a mass of tangled undergrowth which make them simply impassable except as you keep in the road, while the river curves so frequently and with so much abruptness--see, I will endeavor to give you some notion of it here--that you would only waste time in attempting to make any short cuts. But, once over the bridge----" "I have only to foot it," burst in Hickory, taking up the sketch which the other had now completed, and glancing at it with a dubious eye. "Do you know, Byrd," he remarked in another moment, "that it strikes me Mansell did not take this roundabout road to the station?" "Why?" "Because it _is_ so roundabout, and he is such a clearheaded fellow. Couldn't he have got there by some shorter cut?"