For a day Elizabeth stayed at home. Herbert, who was always quiet, was even quieter than usual, but she discovered no clue to his depression. He was under no more of a cloud than she; he worked no harder; it was time that he lifted up his head.
When she started out on her next journey of exploration she knew that she was doing that of which the old gentleman would not approve. She went not to the north where lay the cultivated farms, but turned in toward the south on the old wood road which led into the mountain and toward the settlement of the mountaineers. She had no serious expectation of making any important discovery; it was rather with an Elizabethan desire to finish that which she had begun. Among ignorant people like the mountaineers there were often old persons whose memories were long.
For almost an hour she went on without seeing a sign of human life. The towering trees interlaced their branches far above her head, sometimes she could see long distances, sometimes the view was cut off on both sides by thickets of rhododendron. She saw many deer; once a fox crossed her path, and partridges rose whirring. The road, if it could be called a road, rose gradually. Presently she had to pick her way over large clods of ground which had been dug up from the side and tossed into the middle. Some one was mending the road according to the inexplicable method followed in the neighborhood. A moment later she heard the sound of voices, and at the next turn she came upon three men working with mattock and spade. They worked close together as though to forget the lonely forest, and they talked loudly and a little nervously.
At sight of Elizabeth they stared open-mouthed. No other sort of appearance could have surprised them as much as that of a young woman alone in the wood road.
“Good-morning,” said Elizabeth.
The men did not answer her good-morning in kind, but made astonished inquiry.
“You are not alone, miss?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you going, miss?”
“I’m looking for a house. Aren’t there any on this road?”