There was a road which branched off from the turnpike, about a mile from the town, and which, after some windings, entered the pike again beyond the toll-gate, and although this road was not always in very good condition, it had seen a good deal of travel, which, in time, gave it the name of the shunpike.  But since Captain Asher had lived at the toll-gate it was remarked that the shunpike was not used as much as in former times.  There were penurious people who had once preferred to go a long way round and save money whose economical dispositions now gave way before the combined attractions of a better road, and a chat with Captain Asher.

It had been predicted by some of her relatives that Olive would not be content with her life in her uncle’s somewhat peculiar household.  He was a bachelor, and seldom entertained company, and his ordinary family consisted of an elderly housekeeper and another servant.  But Olive was not in the least dissatisfied.  From her infancy up, she had lived so much among people that she had grown tired of them; and her good-natured uncle, with his sea stories, the garden, the old-fashioned house, the fields and the woods beyond, the little stream, which came hurrying down from the mountains, where she could fish or wade as the fancy pleased her, gave her a taste of some of the joys of girlhood which she had not known when she was really a girl.

Another thing that greatly interested her was the toll-gate.  If she had been allowed to do so, she would have spent the greater part of her time taking money, making change, and talking to travelers.  But this her uncle would not permit.  He did not object to her doing some occasional toll-gate work, and he did not wonder that she liked it, remembering how interesting it often was to himself, but he would not let her take toll indiscriminately.

So they made a regular arrangement about it.  When the captain was at his meals, or shaving, or otherwise occupied, old Jane attended to the toll-gate.  At ordinary times, and when any of his special friends were seen approaching, the captain collected toll himself, but when women happened to be traveling on the road, then it was arranged that Olive should go to the gate.

Two or three times it had happened that some young men of the town, hearing their sisters talk of the pretty girl who had taken their toll, had thought it might be a pleasant thing to drive out on the pike, but their money had always been taken by the captain, or else by the wooden-faced Jane, and nothing had come of their little adventures.

The garden hedge which ran alongside the road was very high.

CHAPTER II

Maria Port.

Olive stood impatiently at the door of the little tollhouse.  In one hand she held three copper cents, because she felt almost sure that the person approaching would give her a dime or two five-cent pieces.

“I never knew horses to travel so slowly as they do on this pike!” she said to herself.  “How they used to gallop on those beautiful roads in France!”