“Then you have bridges,” said Nic naïvely, “if you have no regular roads?”
“Bridges? No; we shall have to ford it if we were going across to-day, it would be a few inches deep; if one of our big rain storms comes, it might be forty or fifty feet. I have seen it sixty.”
Nic glanced at his father.
“Simple truth, my boy,” he said. “The river is in a deep trough between two ranges of hills; and if there have been rains we might be detained on the bank for days or weeks.”
“And whereabouts does home lie?” asked Nic.
“Yonder,” said his father, pointing toward the north-east. “The air is wonderfully clear now, and perhaps you can see what I do—that faint blue ridge that looks like a layer of cloud low down on the horizon.”
“Yes, I can see it,” said Nic eagerly; “but surely it won’t take us a week to ride there. It looks quite close.”
“Yes, in this clear atmosphere, Nic; but it is a long way off, as you will find before we get there. Of course if we could canter our thirty or forty miles a day we should soon be there, but we are an escort only. We want to take care of the waggon.”
“But couldn’t the men take care of that?”
“Perhaps; but a good master looks after his valuables himself. Brookes is a pretty trusty man, but the other is a new hand, whom I have lately had from my neighbour Mr Dillon, the magistrate, and I have not tried him yet sufficiently to trust. That load contains things that will be of great value to me, things Lady O’Hara bought me: seeds and implements, guns, ammunition, powder, and endless odds and ends wanted by your mother and sisters, who cannot send into the next street to buy what they want.”