"Better take 'em on to old Josey's, Charley," called out a friendly voice to Claggett.
"Yes, old Josey will do the correct thing by them," remarked a full-bearded, sunburned gentleman, who, seated astride of a mule, now came "clopping" toward them through the mud, from the opposite direction.
"I am really afraid, Mr. Townsend," Claggett said, persuasively, "that we shall be forced to go on a mile or so further, to old Josey's."
"And who in the thunder is old Josey?" exclaimed Vance, testily.
"Never heard o' him up Nawth, suh?" answered the trooper, with a twinkle in his eye. "He's the big person o' this part,—an old bachelor,—Mr. Joseph Lloyd, who runs the best farms and raises the best stock in the neighborhood. The truth is, not many visitors come here, unless they are booked for Mr. Lloyd's."
"What claim have I on him, unless I can pay my night's lodging and yours? I will leave you and the lame horse here, and make my way back to-night to Glenwood."
"To get to Glenwood, you'd have to pass over right smart of that mire we came through," said Claggett, pensively.
"Then, in Heaven's name, let us go to Josey's," said Vance, laughing, in spite of his bad humor.
They bade farewell to the village, and went off as they had come, Vance choosing to walk, the trooper leading the lame horse.
And now, in defiance of his plight, his melancholy appearance, the accident to his favorite, Vance yielded himself to the spell of a region that became at every moment, as he advanced, more wildly beautiful. The sun, about to set, sent a flood of radiance over hills high and low, over a broken rolling country dominated by the massive shaft of Massanutton Mountain, rising like a tower above his lesser brethren. That the "mile or two further on" stretched into four or five, the young man cared not a jot. His lungs filling with crisp, invigorating air, he strode forward, and was almost sorry when the dormer-windows of an old house shrouded by locust-trees in bloom appeared upon a plateau across intervening fields.