Then, again, a creek or river would bar our course, and we would have to ride for miles until we turned its head, or found a ferry or a ford, and so overcome its opposition. So on we rode until, as the day waxed near the noon hour, we came to the little hamlet of Georgetown, nestling amid the hills on the banks of the Sassafras. Crossing the river at the ferry, we began the last stage of our journey.
The trail now skirted the broad lands of Bohemia Manor, and crossed the beautiful river of that name, embedded between the hills and wide-stretching farm lands.
As we approached the banks of the Elk the country grew more rolling and wilder—in our front the Iron Hills rose up before us, crowned with forests, in sharp contrast to the low-lying country through which we had been passing.
And now, as our appetites became pressing, we urged our horses on, for we had still many miles to travel.
CHAPTER II
WE MEET THE MAID
We had just come in sight of the blue waters of the Elk, as it rolled between the forest-clad hills on either side, basking here for a moment in the sunshine, then lost in the deeper shadows of the overhanging forest.
"There rolls the Elk," cried Dick. "Only ten miles more, and a stroke upon a piece of paper, and then, my boy, you are done for. A pain that eats its way ever inward, a thirst that never slackens, and over all the black night lowering down. Aye, so it is, Sir Monk of the Long Face; but we will have some fun before we are put under the sod or our bones are left to whiten on the sands."