Then a revulsion of belief ensued, and he began to fear that they might already have descended upon their quarry, and with all their captives have returned to the county town by the road by which they came--nearer than the route through the crossroads, though far more rugged. Why had not this possibility before occurred to him! He had so often prefigured their triumphant advent into the hamlet with all their guarded and shackled prisoners, the callow Leander in the midst, and his own gracefully enacted rôle of virtuous, grief-stricken, pleading relative, that it seemed a recollection--something that had really happened--rather than the figment of anticipation. But no word, no breath of intimation, had ruffled the serenity of the crossroads. The calm, still, yellow sunshine day by day suffused the land like the benignities of a dream--almost too good to be true. Every man with the heart of a farmer within him was at the plough-handles, and making the most of the fair weather. The cloudless sky and the auspicious forecast of fine days still to come did more to prove to the farmer the existence of an all-wise, overruling Providence than all the polemics of the world might accomplish. The furrows multiplied everywhere save in Nehemiah's own fields, where he often stood so long in the turn-row that the old horse would desist from twisting his head backward in surprise, and start at last of his own motion, dragging the plough, the share still unanchored in the ground, half across the field before he could be stopped. The vagaries of these “lands” that the absent-minded Nehemiah laid off attracted some attention. “What ails yer furrows ter run so crooked, Nehemiah?” observed a passer-by, a neighbor who had been to the blacksmith-shop to get his plough-point sharpened; he looked over the fence critically. “Yer eyesight mus' be failin' some.” “I dun'no',” rejoined Nehemiah, hastily. Then reverting to his own absorption. “War it you-uns ez I hearn say thar war word kem ter the crossroads 'bout some revenuers raid in' 'round some-whar in the woods?” The look of surprise cast upon him seemed to his alert anxiety to betoken suspicion. “Laws-a-massy, naw!” exclaimed his interlocutor. “Ye air the fust one that hev named sech ez that in these diggin's, fur I'd hev hearn tell on it, sure, ef thar hed been enny sech word goin' the rounds.”