“Glad you are beginning to see the other side,” said Horatius.
I shut up.
“We’ll be there by four,” he said; “just the time the birds begin to feed good. Oh, we’ll get a few yet. It’s a long lane, you know. Our luck is turning.”
“This is fun,” I said, as we flew along the newly gravelled road parallel with the creek—“fine—give it to her.”
The scenery was beautiful; the bluffs were draped in clustering red berries, and the woods old gold and crimson. The water foamed over the lime rocks, glowing iridescent in the sun, and the air was bracing as we buzzed along.
Honk! Honk! “Let her up!” I cried, as a touch of speed mania got into me. “Say, I see how it is,” I said, “why a man soon gets the speed mania in him. Horsemen can’t blame you, for they have got it, too.”
“Oh, we’re riding,” he cried. “You have an hour yet.”
We were indeed riding—along a narrow path of the road rising to a rather abrupt hill. Rising and peeping over, I saw a long procession of creeping things, their ears just shining above the hill we were both ascending.
“Halt! Stop!” I cried.
It was too late—everlastingly too late! We were meeting a negro funeral procession—good old Uncle Pete, as good an old-time darky as ever lived. I had known him well, a fellow of infinite jest. But I did not recognize him promptly, now—at least as I soon saw him.