The boys rehitched the span of very good horses to the peddler’s wagon, Luke got on the driver’s seat and the girls and Sammy returned to the automobile, and the procession started, the peddler’s wagon going ahead to lead the way.
Neale was very careful to keep in the middle of the road thereafter; for although the rain had ceased, as Luke foretold, the roads were still rivers. The branch road they turned into led back in the same general direction from which the tourists had come; but that made no difference now. It was shelter for the night they wanted, and in the on-coming darkness and the storm they all felt only too glad to be led without question.
In a half hour or so, they came out of the woods, after surmounting a hill, and found open fields all about them. The sky remained overcast and it was a dark night; but it was better here in the open than in the woods where the accident to the automobile had happened. There was not a gleam of lamplight anywhere; and when the peddler’s wagon stopped finally in front of a great hay barn, Luke Shepard assured them that the dwelling of the owner of the farm was beyond a patch of woods and could not be seen even in daylight.
“I hope he will not object to our stopping here,” Mrs. Heard said, when she climbed down from the van, in which she had stayed for the ride to the barn.
“Yes. We have had one experience with the natives,” Agnes said, laughing, “that was not pleasant.”
“Oh! Mr. Keech will not object,” Cecile assured them. “We have found the people around here very nice indeed.”
“So have we—for the most part,” Ruth hastened to say. “Nobody could be nicer than the people we stayed with last night”; and she told the Shepards about the blacksmith and “Mother.”
“Oh, we know them! They are the salt of the earth!” cried Cecile.
“Then that constable that wouldn’t let us eat our lunch in the woods over yonder must be the pepper,” said Neale, with a grin.
Luke and Cecile had to be told about that. But they did not recognize the officious constable.