away from our rush
past their nesting-places. Frosty spoke when we had passed out of the
home-field, even in our haste stopping to close and tie fast the gate
behind us.

"You don't want to run your horse down in the first ten miles, Ellis;
we'll make time by taking it easy at first, and you'll get there just as
soon." I knew he was right about it, and pulled Shylock down to the
steady lope that was his natural gait. It was hard, though, to just
"mosey" along as if we were starting out to kill time and earn our daily
wage in the easiest possible manner. One's nerves demanded an unusual
pace--a pace that would soothe fear by its very headlong race against
misfortune.

Once or twice it occurred to me to wonder, just for a minute, how we
should fare in King's Highway; but mostly my thoughts stuck to dad, and
how it happened that he was "critically ill," as the message had put it.
Crawford had sent that message; I knew from the precise way it was
worded--Crawford never said _sick_--and Crawford was about as conservative
a man as one could well be, and be human. He was as unemotional as a
properly trained footman; Jenks, our butler, showed more feeling. But
Crawford, if he was conservative, was also conscientious. Dad had had him
for ten years, and trusted him a million miles farther than he would trust
anybody else--for Crawford could no more lie than could the
multiplication-table; if he said dad was "critically ill," that settled
it; dad was. I used to tell Barney MacTague, when he thought it queer that
I knew so little about dad's affairs, that dad was a fireproof safe, and
Crawford was the combination lock. But perhaps it was the other way
around; at any rate, they understood each other perfectly, and no other
living man understood either.

The darkness flowed down over the land and hid the farther hills; the
sky-line crept closer until White Divide seemed the boundary of the world,
and all beyond its tumbled shade was untried mystery. Frosty, a shadowy
figure rising and falling regularly beside me, turned his face and spoke
again:

"We ought to make Pochette's Crossing by daylight, or a little after--with
luck," he said. "We'll have to get horses from him to go on with; these
will be all in, when we get that far."

"We'll try and sneak through the pass," I answered, putting unpleasant
thoughts resolutely behind me. "We can't take time to argue the point out
with old King."

"Sneak nothing," Frosty retorted grim