Linda laughed.
“I am not so very old myself,” she answered, “and he is much younger than I, not a great deal older than you, I should think. You are not quite a grown man yet, and he has only just ceased being a boy. That is all the difference.”
She put the last thing into his pack and helped him to pull the straps tight.
“We are ready now,” she said, “and I know you would like to go at once, but it is not wise. It is a long day’s journey even to Two Rivers, and if you set out now you could not reach there until hours after midnight. So you had better start at daylight to-morrow.”
It was before dawn next day when she knocked softly at his door. When he had slipped downstairs and had a hasty breakfast in the kitchen, she went out upon the steps with him and gave him the most explicit directions as to how he was to go. She had never been so far as Jasper Peak or the end of the lake where her brother lived, but she could tell him, almost mile by mile, the way to the Indian encampment where the Chippewa boy, Shokatan, could put him on the next stage of his journey.
“You should not go,” she said again at the last, but the light of excitement danced in her eyes as plainly as in Hugh’s.
He shouldered his pack, adjusted the straps and held out his hand to say good-by. The spotless house, as he looked about it for the last time, seemed a very homelike little place even though he had known it for only a day. The white, scrubbed floor, the bright blue cupboard, the picture on the wall of the Edmonds boys and their great white dog—how soon would he see them all again?
Even in early-rising Rudolm there was no one yet abroad to see him go. He went out the gate, past a half dozen houses, across a stretch of meadow, came out at last upon the road, Oscar’s road, and set off up the hill.
The sun was just coming up over the ridge to the eastward, the birds were beginning to chirp in the thickets and the tall, scattered pine trees were bowing their heads in the autumn wind. Very little of all this did Hugh notice for he had eyes of wonder and interest only for the road upon which he was traveling. It wound up the slope, grass-grown in many places, as though very few feet had trodden it in the past year. It was built of stone and gravel, well built too, as he could easily perceive, for it mounted the hillside in easy grades with wide, even curves, and it still showed the weed-filled ditches that had been dug to drain it and it spanned a little stream on a high, stout bridge. Hugh tramped on up the slope, crossed the summit of the hill and was about to descend on the other side when—
“Oh!” he cried suddenly and stood still in surprise.