But again there echoed through the woods the unaccustomed sound that had aroused the doctor. This time it was too near to be mistaken; not even White Rosy's calm could ignore it.
"Hel—lo!" said Ogilvie. "A big horn and a noiseless car! Pretty early in the season for those fellows. Make way for your betters, White Rosy!"
He drew well into the green of the roadside; for, highway and turnpike though it was, the road was narrow enough in this unfrequented part to make passing a matter of calculation. The driver of the automobile had evidently discovered that for himself, for he was climbing slowly and carefully, sounding his horn as frequently as if driving through a village. As the car came out upon the cleared space of the crossroads, Ogilvie turned, with the frank interest of the country dweller in the passer-by, and with the countryman's etiquette of the road waved to its solitary occupant.
The driver of the car returned the greeting, drew slowly forward, and stopped beside the doctor's old buggy. Ogilvie was not so much of a countryman as not to recognize in the machine's powerful outlines the costly French racer. But that was only another of Destiny's disguises. The two men met on the mountain-top, took cognizance of each other in that high solitude where the things of the world lay below them; and, face to face, each measured the other and insensibly recognized his worth of character. Both knew men; both had been trained to the necessity of forming quick judgments. Before they had exchanged a word they were sure of each other; before the hour was out their friendship was as certain as if it were years old.
The occupant of the car had a smile which was apt to be grimly humorous, as Ogilvie noted in the moment before he spoke.
"I'm lost!" the stranger said, as if admitting a joke on himself. "I've come around in a circle twice, looking for a place called Bluemont Summit, and I've sounded my horn right along, hoping somebody would run out to look, somebody I could ask my way of. But you're the first person I've seen this afternoon!"
Ogilvie laughed aloud. "No wonder, if you've been blowing your horn all the way," he said. "If you had kept still, you might have come on someone unawares; but nobody around here would run out to look at you in the open."
"Is there anyone to run?" the other asked, again with the grim twist of his lips.
"Yes, but they are shy, and too proud to seem curious. There may be eyes on us now, peeping through those woods," said Ogilvie. "But you're not far from the Summit, not far, that is, with that car of yours. This is the Battlesburg Road, and you're ten miles or so to the northwest of Bluemont."
The driver of the car had stepped down into the road to do something to his lamps; it was already so dark that their gleam shot far ahead. White Rosy eyed them dubiously.