"Well, my dear, I hope he won't ask you to," said her visitor, with dryness. She rose. "I've a long drive before me, so I'll not sit longer. Who's that—I left my glasses in the coach—who's that speaking to Gabriel?"
"It's Mr. Gaudylock."
"Gaudylock! He's not been in Albemarle for a year! When did he come back?"
"Just the other day, ma'am." A smile crept over Vinie's face. "He brought me a comb like the Spanish women wear. He's a mighty kind man—Mr. Gaudylock."
The hunter and Mrs. Selden met at the broken gate. "I am glad to see you back, Adam," she said. "You're a rolling stone, but all the same we're fond of you in Albemarle."
"I'm surely fond of Albemarle, ma'am," answered Adam.
"When I've rolled long and far enough and the moss is ready to gather on me, I reckon I'll roll back to a hillside in the old county. I'm sorry to see the drouth so bad. We've had a power of rain over the mountains."
"Not long since, I had a letter from a kinsman of mine in Louisiana, and he spoke of you. He said that up and down the rivers you were known, that the villages made it a holiday when you came to one, and that in the forest your name was like Robin Hood's."
"Robin Hood? Who's he?" demanded Adam; then, "Oh, you mean the man in the poetry book. I reckon he never saw the Mississippi in flood, and his forest would have laid on the palm of your hand. Yes, I'm known out there." He gave his mellow laugh. "A letter of introduction from Adam Gaudylock is a pretty good letter, whether it's to the captain of an ark, or a Creek sachem, or a Natchitoches settler, or a soldier at Fort Stoddert. Let me help you in, ma'am."
He handed her to her seat with the sure lightness and the woodsman's grace which was part of his charm, then gave her order to Gabriel. The coach turned and went back through the Main Street, and so on, in the yellow afternoon, to the Three-Notched Road. As she passed again the green door, Mrs. Selden looked out, but the door was fast and the shutters closed behind the blush roses. "He must have gone home early," she said to herself, and all the way along the Three-Notched Road she thought of Lewis Rand and his career.