He did not raise his head until he reached a cross-roads. Then he stopped, pushed back his cap from his face, which was flushed and hot from his long walk, and looked up at the signs. On the left, the white board, roughly carved into the semblance of a pointing finger, read, “Frederickstown, 2-½ Miles.” The name on the right-hand sign-post was too badly damaged by weather to be intelligible to a stranger’s eyes; only the distance, “30 miles” was legible.
There was no reason why the boy should have hesitated for a moment; his destination was Frederickstown, the second direction did not concern him in the least; and yet, perhaps because the vagueness of the destination of the second road appealed to his imagination; perhaps because the greater distance lent it greater charm, and the very impossibility of walking thirty miles that day made it seem the more desirable, at any rate there he stood, looking uncertainly to the right, then to the left, and back to the right again. A gust of wind, flapping the skirts of his coat rudely, seemed to shove him forward, as if impatient of his indecision, but he planted his feet firmly, and continued to gape uncertainly up at the sign posts. “I’ll make up my own mind, thank you, and I’m not to be hurried,” was the reply which his determined attitude made to the impatience of the wind.
There was little difference in the features of the country traversed by the two roads; all that he could see through the blur of the rain, were bleak fields, muddy furrows, here and there a clump of leafless trees, the skeleton of a forest, or, down in a hollow the sheds and barns of a little farm. A cheerless prospect for a hungry and footsore Wanderer.
Behind him he heard the weary splashing of a horse’s feet, and the creaking of wheels. He turned around. A covered wagon, drawn by a tired, steaming horse was approaching.
“Hey!” he hailed the driver, who pulled in the horse to a stand-still, and thrust out a grizzled face from under the canvas.
“Where does that road go to?” asked the boy, pointing to the right.
The driver tilted his hat, scratched his head, and straightened his hat again before replying, thus gaining time to cast a shrewd eye over the appearance of the questioner. He was one of those excellent back-country farmers who regard every stranger with suspicion, and do not like to be hurried into speech.
“That road,” he said at length, “goes to the City—thirty miles. Going to walk it, stranger?”
“Which way are you going?”
The farmer jerked his head in the direction of Frederickstown.