“I don’t believe that he was a traitor!” said she.
When she reached home she saw an automobile at the entrance to the yard. From it Colonel Thomas waved his hand, and she ran to meet him.
“No, I thank you. I was anxious about you on account of your neighbors. Have they given you any trouble?”
“No; they hang round, but they haven’t bothered me.”
Then, impulsively, Elizabeth told him what she had been doing. He shook his head.
“Oh, young lady, you’ll find it a wild-goose chase!”
“They think he burned Chambersburg,” said Elizabeth with a faint smile. “The situation has a gleam of humor, hasn’t it?”
“Why, the burning took place a year after he had disappeared!”
“I’d like to ask you some questions about the battle,” said Elizabeth. “When I was a child, it was my dream to come here.” Tears dimmed her eyes. The old gentleman saw them and looked away.
“I’ll be up here again one of these days, then I’ll bring you some books.”
“And will you stop and visit with us for a while?”
“Yes. You’ll not take any risk with those rascals beyond you, will you?”
“They have only one accomplishment and that is shooting, but I don’t believe you need be afraid of that.”
For a day Elizabeth stayed at home. Herbert, who was always quiet, was even quieter than usual, but she discovered no clue to his depression. He was under no more of a cloud than she; he worked no harder; it was time that he lifted up his head.
When she started out on her next journey of exploration she knew that she was doing that of which the old gentleman would not approve. She went not to the north where lay the cultivated farms, but turned in toward the south on the old wood road which led into the mountain and toward the settlement of the mountaineers. She had no serious expectation of making any important discovery; it was rather with an Elizabethan desire to finish that which she had begun. Among ignorant people like the mountaineers there were often old persons whose memories were long.
For almost an hour she went on without seeing a sign of human life. The towering trees interlaced their branches far above her head, sometimes she could see long distances, sometimes the view was cut off on both sides by thickets of rhododendron. She saw many deer; once a fox crossed her path, and partridges rose whirring. The road, if it could be called a road, rose gradually. Presently she had to pick her way over large clods of ground which had been dug up from the side and tossed into the middle. Some one was mending the road according to the inexplicable method followed in the neighborhood. A moment later she heard the sound of voices, and at the next turn she came upon three men working with mattock and spade. They worked close together as though to forget the lonely forest, and they talked loudly and a little nervously.