“Half-past eight.”
“That’s a good deal after dark.”
“So it is, at this time of the year, and it’s going to be dark sooner than usual.”
“How’s that?”
“Don’t you notice how it has clouded up this afternoon? A big storm is coming and we’re going to catch it afore we strike Piketon.”
“Well,” growled Wagstaff, “that isn’t pleasant; we were fools, Jim, that we didn’t stay in the train; but we can shut ourselves in with the curtains and let the driver run things.”
“I reckon I haven’t druv over this road for twenty-five years,” said Lenman, “without striking a storm afore to-night.”
“Sartinly, sartinly,” added Ethan Durrell; “life must have its shadows as well as sunshine, though I don’t like to be catched on a lonely road this way. I say, Bill,” he added, in a half-frightened voice, “are you troubled with any such pesky things as highway robbers?”
“If you hadn’t asked me that question I wouldn’t have said anything about it; but I’ve been stopped and held up, as they say, just like them chaps out West.”
“You don’t say so!” exclaimed the New Englander, while the young men on the back seat became interested.