"'Tis that, sir. But we'll have a storm before the day is over. There's a deal of travel just now. Mr. Cary of Greenwood passed a short while ago." A negro brought a dripping gourd. Rand put it to his lips and drank the cool water. "Which road," he asked, as he gave back the gourd,--"which road did Mr. Cary take? The main road or the river road?" The miller looked over his shoulder. "Jim and Bob and Shirley, which road did Mr. Cary take?" "I didn't notice." "Reckon he took the main road, Bates." "I wasn't looking, but you could hear his horse's hoofs, and that wouldn't have been so on the river road." "'Twuz de main road, sah." Rand and Young Isham went on, down by the mill and along the bank to the clear, brown, shallow ford, crossed, and paused beneath a guide-post upon the crest of the further bank. The trees hid the mill. Before them stretched the main road, to the right dipped between fern and under arching boughs the narrow, broken river road. "If he went this way," said Rand slowly, "I'll go that. Young Isham--" "Yaas, marster." "The mare's spent. No need to give her this rough travelling. Take the main road and take it slowly. Let her walk, and when you reach Red Fields, stop and have her fed. I'll go and go fast by the river road." Master and slave parted, the latter keeping to the sunny thoroughfare, the former plunging into the narrow, heavily shaded track that ran through ravine and over ridge, now beside the water and now in close woods of birch and hemlock. The road was bad, but Selim and his master bent to it grimly, with no nice avoidance of rut or stone or sunken place. To the horse there was before him food and rest, to the man his home. They took at the same pace the much of rough and the little of smooth, and the miles fell behind them. The sun was high, but there were threatening masses of clouds, with now and then a distant roll of thunder. The road was solitary, little used at any time, and to-day as lonely a woodland way as might well be conceived.