They took dinner at a farm house newly built on a little clearing in the forest, finding themselves not daintily served, but supplied with an abundance of good, substantial, well cooked food—bread, butter, coffee, ham and eggs, and two or three kinds of vegetables, with stewed dried apple pie for dessert.
After an hour's rest for themselves and horses, they traveled on again, reaching a little town in time to get their supper and night's lodging at its tavern, where the fare and accommodations were on a par with those of the farm-house.
They had found the roads rough: those they passed over the next day were worse still, mostly corduroy, over the rounded logs of which the wheels passed with constant jolting, and where one had been displaced or rotted away, as was occasionally the case, there would be a sudden descent of, first the fore then the hind wheels, with a violent jerk that nearly, or quite threw them from their seats.
They reached Delphi on the Wabash, where they were to take a steamboat, sore, weary and very glad to make the change.
A night at the Delphi hotel, and the next morning they went aboard the boat which carried them down the Wabash and up the Ohio to Madison; where they landed again and passed part of a day and night. Embarking once more in a larger craft, they continued on their way up the Ohio as far as Portsmouth, whence a stage carried them across the country to Lansdale.
Miss Stanhope had not received the letter which should have informed her of their coming. She was sitting alone by the fire, quietly knitting and thinking, perchance of the dear ones far away in Pleasant Plains, when the loud and prolonged "Toot! toot!" of a horn, followed by the roll and rumble of wheels, aroused her from her reverie.
"The evening stage," she said half-aloud, then rose hastily, dropped her knitting, and hurried to the door; for surely it had stopped at her gate.
Yes, there it was; a gentleman had alighted and was handing out a lady, while the guard was at the boot getting out their trunks. She could see it all plainly by the moonlight, as she threw the door wide open.
"Who can they be?" she asked herself, as she stepped quickly across the porch and down the garden path, to meet and welcome her unexpected guests.