“Why, no. Horses always go where they are used to going,” said the woman, in a matter-of-fact tone. “That is, if you give ’em their head. When is the cap’n coming?”
“How should I know?” asked Peggy, staring at her. “I don’t——”
“We air friends, miss. You needn’t be afraid to say anything you like. But you air right. Keep a still tongue in these times. ’Tis safest. And now, I reckon you’d like to go to bed?”
“Yes, if you please,” answered the maiden, so amazed by the conversation that she welcomed the change for reflection. Was Captain Hazy the British commander of the foraging party who had come to the plantation, she wondered. It occurred to her that it might be wise to accept her hostess’s advice to keep a still tongue.
There was but one bed in the room, and this was given Peggy, while the mother and son simply lay down upon the floor before the fire, which was the custom among mountaineers. Without disrobing the girl lay down, but not to sleep. She was uneasy, and the more she reflected upon her position the more it came to her that she had been rash to start out alone as she had done.
“But I won’t turn back now,” she decided. “I will take some of the money which Friend Henry gave me, and hire some one to take me home. ’Tis what I should have done at first.”
At the first sign of dawn she was astir. The woman rose at the same time, and prepared her a hot breakfast.
“Now you just go right down that way,” she told Peggy, as the maiden mounted her pony, indicating the direction as she spoke. “That’ll take you down to the Cross Creek road. Ford the river at Cross Creek, and you will be right on the lower road to Virginia.”
Peggy thanked her, gave her a half guinea, and departed. Could she have followed the direction given she would, as the woman said, have been on the lower road to Virginia, but alas, such general directions took no account of numerous crossroads and forkings, and the maiden was soon in a maze. That night she found a resting-place at a farmhouse where the accommodations were of a better nature, but when she tried to hire a man for guidance not one seemed willing to go.
“They were needed at home,” they said. “There were so many raiding parties that men could not be spared.” Which was true, but disheartening to Peggy.