So about six o’clock we turned into the road going north, that isn’t marked on the tour map. The first thing we did was to get onto the wrong road and bunk our noses into Rome.
I said, “If we meet Julius Caesar, we’ll ask which is the road for Watertown.” There was a dandy ice-cream store in Rome, so Harry said we might as well do as the Romans do, and have some ice cream. Rome didn’t look very ancient, but good night, the road out of it was ancient enough.
We went back to Deerfield and hit the road north, and the next thing we ran plunk into Old Forge.
“Everything around here is out of date,” Harry said; “Ancient Rome and Old Forge. I long for New York.”
By that time it was dark. We followed the road south again to Alder Creek, and then hit into the other road north, and went through Boonville, so then we knew we were all right. Anyway, we were on the right road, only the road was all wrong. Believe me, that cow-path had some nerve calling itself a road. After about an hour we passed Lurin and then, good night, some hill! Up, up, up, up, till pretty soon we could look down off to the east and see little bits of lights; I guess it was a village.
Anyway, the road ran right along the edge of a steep precipice with only a kind of a rough fence between. Pretty soon, Harry stopped the car. Skinny was fast asleep.
“Looks pretty bad ahead there, doesn’t it?” Harry said to the rest of us.
By the glare of the headlights I could see that for quite a long way ahead, the road was closer to the edge than it ought to be.
“There’s a strip of fence gone,” Harry said.
“I think the land has broken away there, that’s what I think,” I told him.