"What's a mile to us, eh? You see it's such a nice clean road and it's been so well traveled that it's better than—what? Turn to the left you say? I always thought we went straight ahead here."
"Straight ahead would take us to the slaughter house," objected his guide.
"Oh! I thought the slaughter house was somewhere around the depot," said Jimmy with a grin at his own joke, which was entirely unappreciated by the boy.
The station, with its menace, had by now been left behind in the whirl of snow, and the heavy dusk of twilight. Jimmy was breathing again, and cheerful, having escaped the most imminent peril. The horse was loping steadily up the street as if imbued with the hope of a warm stall in a warm stable.
"Turn to the right! The right! That's the way," insisted the boy, and Jimmy, after a single backward glance to convince him that they had escaped the mob, said, "Son, I don't know these roads as well as you do. Maybe it'd be better if you took the lines. But whatever you do, keep going. Mr. Wade says you are to hurry—that is for the first few miles. You see, he's afraid old Bill will catch cold if he's not kept moving, and they tell me that it's an awful thing for a horse to catch cold on a day like this for the want of exercise. Make him hustle!"
CHAPTER VII
And Bill hustled them through the outskirts of the town, and into a road that was fairly good going, and out to where snowladen fields and snow weighted trees were on either hand before Jimmy's compassion swayed him to suggest that after all there was no very great hurry.
"I'm sort of glad of that," commented the boy. "Bill's about winded. He's my friend, and—and I don't like to see him puffin' like that. I'm right glad you'd just as soon slow down. I was worried about Bill."
Jimmy thought about Bovolarapus, and then of Bill, and liked that boy.