"And yet that makes it all the more necessary to come out top dog this time. Where d'you think they are?"
"If the Drovers' Track's good enough for a car," she answered, "I should guess—after all, it's all guessing, isn't it?—I should guess that they turned off the road at the hawthorns and the white stone, and drove straight on to Harthborough."
"They've had time to go and come back," said Dick. "If we had food with us, we might hide all night on the moor. But you'd be ill by the morning."
"Let's go on," said Amaryllis.
"You lead me to luck," he answered, "so what you say goes. A train's the safest place for us, and, if Melchard's seen his picket there after driving right over this ground, he won't be expecting to find us on the way back."
"He may be between us and Harthborough now," said Amaryllis.
"If we can pass him, then," said Dick, "his Harthborough picket won't give us much trouble. Our other way is the London road. There we might run into Melchard plus his picket. The railway's at Harthborough, so Harthborough's got it."
"And here," said the girl, "is the Drovers' Track."
Before they knew it, they had stepped into a way wider and more clearly marked than the path which had brought them across the base of the triangle of which the apex was the white stone by the hawthorns they had never seen.
"It's a derelict Roman road," said Dick, as they walked along it towards the cleft in the ridge. "See the small paving stones—here—there—and you can feel 'em through the turf, here at the side. Most of this grass has come since the railways took the cattle and the goods wagons off the road. If the track is as good as this all the way——"