It was decided that Major Welch and Ruth should go ahead and select a place which they could rent until they should find one that exactly suited them, and then Mrs. Welch, as soon as she could finish packing the furniture and other things which they would want, should follow them.
A week later, Ruth and her father found themselves in the old county and almost at their journey’s end, in a region which though as far as possible from Ruth’s conception of palm and orange groves, was to the girl, shut up as she had been all her life in a city, not a whit less romantic and strange.
It was far wilder than she had supposed it would be. The land lay fallow, or was cultivated only in patches; the woods were forests and seemed to stretch interminably; the fields were growing up in bushes and briars. And yet the birds flitted and sang in every thicket, and over everything rested an air of peace that sank into Ruth’s soul, as she jolted along in a little rickety wagon which they had hired at the station, and filled her with a sense of novelty and content. She was already beginning to feel something of the charm of which her cousin, Larry Middleton, and Captain Thurston were always talking. Some time, perhaps, she would see Blair Cary, about whom Reely Thurston was always hinting in connection with Larry Middleton; and she tried to picture to herself what she would be like—small and dark and very vivacious, or else no doubt, haughty. She was sure she should not like her.
On her father, however, the same surroundings that pleased Miss Ruth had a very different effect. Major Welch had always carried in his mind the picture of this section as he remembered it the first time he rode through it, when it was filled with fine plantations and pleasant homesteads, and where, even during the war, the battle in which he had been wounded had been fought amid orchards and rolling fields and pastures.
At length, at the top of the hill they came to a fork, but though there was an open field between the roads, such as Major Welch remembered, there was no church there; in the open field was only a great thicket, an acre or more in extent, and the field behind it was nothing but a wilderness.
“We’ve missed the road, just as I supposed,” said Major Welch. “We ought to have kept nearer to the river, and I will take this road and strike the other somewhere down this way. I thought this country looked very different—and yet—?” He gazed all around him, at the open fields filled with bushes and briars, the rolling hills beyond, and the rampart of blue spurs across the background.
“No, we must have crossed Twist Creek lower down that day.” He turned into the road leading off from that they had been travelling, and drove on. This way, however, the country appeared even wilder, and they had driven two or three miles before they saw anyone. Finally they came on a man walking along, just where a footpath left the road and turned across the old field. He was a small, sallow fellow, very shabbily dressed, the only noticeable thing about him being his eyes, which were both keen and good-humored. Major Welch stopped him and inquired as to their way.
“Where do you want to go?” asked the man, politely.
“I want to go to Mr. Hiram Still’s,” said the Major.
The countryman gave him a quick glance.