“Oh! That road down that way is sort o’ stopped up,” said the man, as if he were carrying on a connected narrative and had not heard him. “They’s soldiers on it too a little fur’er down, and they’s done got word you’re a-comin’ that a-way.”
“What’s that?” they asked, sharply.
“Leastways it’s stopped up, and I knows a way down this a-way in and about as nigh as that,” went on the speaker, in the same level voice.
“Where do you live?” they asked him.
“I lives back in the pines here a piece.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“About twenty-three years, I b’leeves; ‘ats what my mother says.”
“You know all the country about here?”
“Ought to.”
“Been in the army?”