The trotters were at the door. He took her hand as he said good-bye, and held it while he added:
“Maybe you'd better forget all I said to-night—be patient with me—remember how long I have waited.”
He was off and sprang into the buggy, elated. Never before had she let him hold her hand even for a moment. He felt, he knew, that he would win her.
He turned the horses and drove off.
From Westmoreland Travis drove straight toward the town. The trotters, keen and full of play, flew along, tossing their queenly heads in the very exuberance of life.
At The Gaffs, he drew rein: “Now, Jim, I'll be back at midnight. You sleep light until I come in, and have their bedding dry and blankets ready.”
He tossed the boy a dollar as he drove off.
Up the road toward the town he drove, finally slackening his trotters' speed as he came into the more thickly settled part of the outskirts. Sand Mountain loomed high in the faint moonlight, and at its base, in the outposts of the town, arose the smoke-stack of the cotton mills.
Around it lay Cottontown.
Slowly he brought the nettled trotters down to a walk. Quietly he turned them into a shaded lane, overhung with forest trees, near which a cottage, one of the many belonging to the mill, stood in the shadow of the forest.