“Hope so, boy, or we shall find it a bit hard. It’s easy enough now, but when the sun’s down it will be rather hard to follow the marks with all these trees overhead.”
“But the path must soon begin to ascend the hill,” said Marcus.
“I expect they’ll have found it easier to walk round it and slope up from the other side. I dare say they’ve got a good deal of baggage—impedimenta, as we call it—else I should have thought that they might have struck up the valley slope at once. It will be dark before long; sooner than I expected.”
“But they had the broad daylight, and of course taking a long sweep it would be much easier for the chariots.”
“Yes,” grunted Serge, “I don’t like having it dark. We mustn’t strike up at once, must we? It would be nearest.”
“No,” said Marcus, decisively; “we might not strike the track again, and perhaps find that we had chosen the wrong hill, and have to come back.”
“Yes, that’s right,” said the old soldier. “Slow but sure;” and the ponies went steadily on, their hoofs rustling through the thick, moist grass where it was not trampled down.
“What’s the matter, Lupe? Thirsty?” asked Marcus, as the dog raised himself up, looked over the front of the chariot, and then turned to gaze wistfully in his master’s eyes. “Want water, old fellow?”
The dog gave the speaker an intelligent look and then sprang out of the chariot, and after trotting alongside for a time, bounded silently forward and disappeared.
They saw no more of him for the next quarter of an hour, and then came upon him sitting waiting at a spot where the beaten track swept away from the river.