"There are two roads: we generally use the river-road."
"To-night? I will go to meet her. By the river-road, you say?"
"Yea."
"And if I do not meet her?"
"If thou dost not meet her," said the lady-abbess, answering calmly, "it will be because she is detained on the road."
I had to believe her, and yet I was very skeptical. As I walked out of the door the man was at my heels. He followed me out on to the wooden stoop and nodded to Hiram.
"Who is that, Hiram?" I whispered as he leaned across the back of a horse, adjusting some leathern buckle.
"That?" said Hiram under his breath. "That's a deep 'un: that's Elder Nebson."
Great was the dissatisfaction of the stout-hearted Splinter at my retreat, as he called it, from the enemy's ground.
"I'd ha' liked nothin' better than to beat up them quarters. I thought every minit' you'd be calling me, and was ready to go in." And he clenched his fist in a way that showed unmistakably how he would have "gone in" had he been summoned. By this time we were driving on briskly toward the river-road. "You wa'n't smart, I reckon, to leave that there house. It was your one chance, hevin' got in. Ten chances to one she's hid away som'eres in one of them upper rooms," and he pointed to a row of dormer-windows, "not knowin' nothin' of your bein' there."