The travellers again reined up and listened.
"It is more like a deer stalking through the bushes, Galbraith."
"No," exclaimed the sergeant, "that's the gallop of a horse making down the road ahead of us, as sure as you are alive; I heard the shoe strike a stone. You must have hearn it too."
"I wouldn't be sure," answered Butler.
"Look to your pistols, Major, and prime afresh."
"We seem to have ridden a great way," said Butler, as he concluded the inspection of his pistols and now held one of them ready in his hand. "Can we have lost ourselves? Should we not have reached the Pacolet before this?"
"I have seen no road that could take us astray," replied Robinson, "and, by what we were told just before sundown, I should guess that we couldn't be far off the ford. We hav'n't then quite three miles to Christie's. Well, courage, major! supper and bed were never spoiled by the trouble of getting to them."
"Wat Adair, I think, directed us to Christie's?" said Butler.
"He did; and I had a mind to propose to you, since we caught him in a trick this morning, to make for some other house, if such a thing was possible, or else to spend the night in the woods."
"Perhaps it would be wise, sergeant; and if you think so still, I will be ruled by you."