The question had been a mere matter of form. Gideon had made up his mind, and if he had been told that they started in five minutes he would not have changed it. He climbed back into the car for his coat and his hat, and then almost furtively stole down the steps again and slipped quietly into the palmetto scrub. “’Most made the mistake of ma life,” he chuckled, “stickin’ to that ol’ train foheveh. ’Tisn’t the right way at, all foh Gideon to come home.” The river was not far away. He could catch the dancing blue of it from time to time in ragged vista, and for this beacon he steered directly. His coat was heavy on his arm, his thin patent-leather ties pinched and burned and demanded detours around swampy places, but he was happy. As he went along, his plan perfected itself. He would get into loose shoes again, old ones, if money could buy them, and old clothes, too. The bull-briers snatching at his tailored splendor suggested that. He laughed when the Florida partridge, a small quail, whirred up from under his feet; he paused to exchange affectionate mockery with red squirrels; and once, even when he was brought up suddenly to a familiar and ominous, dry reverberation, the small, crisp sound of the rolling drums of death, he did not look about him for some instrument of destruction, as at any other time he would have done, but instead peered cautiously over the log before him, and spoke in tolerant admonition: “Now, Misteh Rattlesnake, yo’ jes min’ yo’ own business. Nobody’s goin’ step on yo’, ner go triflin’ roun’ yo’ in no way whatsomeveh. Yo’ jes lay there in the sun an’ git ’s fat ’s yo’ please. Don’ yo’ tu’n yo’ weeked li’l’ eyes on Gideon. He’s jes goin’ ’long home, an’ ain’ lookin’ foh no muss.” He came presently to the water, and, as luck would have it, to a little group of negro cabins, where he was able to buy old clothes and, after much dickering, a long and somewhat leaky rowboat rigged out with a tattered leg-of-mutton sail. This he provisioned with a jug of water, a starch box full of white corn-meal, and a wide strip of lean razorback bacon.