“I guess we’d better tumble out now,” said the boy. “We’re gettin’ on to Haley’s Hill, and old Bill’s gettin’ kinder tuckered. Hold on! don’t jump out now. I’ll stop on the next thank-you-marm.”
A PASTURE GATE
He pulled in his steed just as the wheels went over a slight ridge that ran across the road, and the three alighted. They were in the dusk of a tall wood of beech and birches that was almost gloomy, so thick were the trees and so shut out the light. The road increased in roughness and in steepness, and finally the boy at the horse’s head called out, “I say, I guess you fellers better push behind there. Bill can’t hardly move the thing, and he kinder acts as if he was goin’ to lay down.”
The campers made haste to give their support, and the caravan went jolting and panting up the slope till the leader let fall the bridle-rein and announced: “There, we’re over the worst of it. Now, if I can find a good soft stone to set on we’ll rest a minute, and then we’ll fire ahead again, and I’ll get ye to Whitcomb’s in less’n no time.”
Jimmy found a bowlder to his mind and began to draw on his stores of gingerbread again. The horse nibbled the bushes at the roadside. The campers took each a wagon wheel and leaned on that and waited.
“I guess we might get in now,” said the boy, rising and brushing the crumbs off his overalls. “It’s pretty rough ahead, but they ain’t much that’s steep.”
There were stones and bog-holes to jolt over, but after a little they came on to a more travelled way, and presently Jimmy drew in his horse and said, “This is Whitcomb’s house right here. That’s his dog at the gate barkin’ at us.”
John went to the front door and rapped. He got no response, and concluded from the grasses and weeds that grew about and before it that front-door visiting was a rare thing at that house. A narrow, flagged walk ran past the corner to the rear. He followed it, and in an open doorway of the L found Mr. Whitcomb reading a paper.
