Her long strides matched Roden’s exactly, and the rapid motion through the stiffly yielding medium under foot began to warm his veins. They saw the serpentine flourish of Unc’ Dick’s voluminous whip-lash outlined against the pale sky as the wagon descended a hill just in front of them. Two more buzzards appeared, slanting in still absorption towards the west. Instantly the collie was after them. “Why didn’t you telegraph?” said the girl, suddenly. “I did,” said Roden, with some grimness. “I telegraphed twice. I also had the pleasure of rereading both telegrams when I arrived at the station about an hour ago.” “Seems to me,” she said, turning to look over her shoulder at the mastiff, pug, and terrier, that were having a tow-row over an old shoe (which same seem to be sown in lieu of corn in the thorns by the Virginian way-side)--“Seems to me that letters reach us twice as quick as telegrams, anyhow. You must have thought it funny we didn’t send for you?” “I don’t know that I found it very amusing,” said Roden, truthfully, adding, in a tone of helpless aggravation, “All my luggage was left behind in Washington.” At this direct appeal the overseer’s daughter at first looked as sorrowful as even Roden could have desired, bursting the next moment into peals and roulades of laughter. Roden, after the first sharp inclination to feel angry, joined in her mirth. “Pore feller!” she said at last, taking off her rain-soaked hat, on which she appeared to dry her brimming eyes--“Pore feller! it all seems awful to you out here, don’t it?” “It does,” said Roden in his heart, but out loud he replied with mendacious civility that it did not. He was, moreover, occupied in a close scrutiny of her uncovered locks. They were of a pale golden color, lying close to her forehead in thick, round rings, after the manner of a child’s, and clustering heavily, with the dampness. As he stood beside her he saw also that she was very tall, taller than most tall women, and that her fair throat, rising boy-like from a dark-red kerchief, had unusual suggestions of muscle beneath its smooth surface. Presently they walked on. The top of a tolerably high hill was soon reached, surmounted, as Roden at first thought, by an almost impenetrable thicket. As they approached nearer, however, he perceived an aperture in the mass of foliage, and a long wooden gate, hanging by one hinge in an aimless, desultory manner, and ornamented also as to its dingy gray with copious splashes of red mud. On either post were rusty iron vases, wherefrom there sprouted two stunted specimens of the aloe tribe. One of these vases, having been broken some years before, hung over to one side with a suggestion of inanimate sentimentality highly ludicrous. Some kind Samaritan had thrust a stick in between its disabled joints, thus preventing it from utter downfall.