Their progress was now easy, for the track had been most carefully cleared, and the horses, all old stagers, marched along in single file without any trouble. Darkness, however, fell, and the scrub was still on either hand of them unchanged.
"Morton," said Brown, breaking the silence, "I've got an idea."
"Stick to it hard, old man; it's the first I ever knew you to possess."
"Don't try to be too funny. Well, I shouldn't be in the least surprised to meet a first-class funeral coming along at any moment."
"You're worse than Billy."
"Billy was partly right. Those old mummies, skeletons, &c., we saw back there, have all been carted along this road from—wherever we're going to. That is the reason it is so carefully cleared."
"Jove! you're right. And we might have come along this road all the way if we had kept our eyes open, instead of tearing ourselves to pieces in the scrub, travelling parallel with it."
"That view of the question did not occur to me, but it's a perfectly feasible one."
"Rather a surprise for the mourners if we blunder on to them in the dark to-night."
"Just what we want to avoid. There's something ahead no white man has yet heard of, and if we can sneak along without our presence being suspected, so much the better."