“Can you direct me the way there?” asked Brice simply.

The astonishment in their faces presently darkened into suspicion again.  “Ef that’s your little game,” began Hiram, with a lowering brow—­

“I have no little game but to see her and speak with her,” said Brice boldly.  “I am alone and unarmed, as you see,” he continued, pointing to his empty belt and small dispatch bag slung on his shoulder, “and certainly unable to do any one any harm.  I am willing to take what risks there are.  And as no one knows of my intention, nor of my coming here, whatever might happen to me, no one need know it.  You would be safe from questioning.”

There was that hopeful determination in his manner that overrode their resigned doggedness.  “Ef we knew how to direct you thar,” said the old woman cautiously, “ye’d be killed outer hand afore ye even set eyes on the girl.  The house is in a holler with hills kept by spies; ye’d be a dead man as soon as ye crossed its boundary.”

“Wot do you know about it?” interrupted her husband quickly, in querulous warning.  “Wot are ye talkin’ about?”

“You leave me alone, Hiram!  I ain’t goin’ to let that young feller get popped off without a show, or without knowin’ jest wot he’s got to tackle, nohow ye kin fix it!  And can’t ye see he’s bound to go, whatever ye says?”

Mr. Tarbox saw this fact plainly in Brice’s eyes, and hesitated.

“The most that I kin tell ye,” he said gloomily, “is the way the gal takes when she goes from here, but how far it is, or if it ain’t a blind, I can’t swar, for I hevn’t bin thar myself, and Harry never comes here but on an off night, when the coach ain’t runnin’ and thar’s no travel.”  He stopped suddenly and uneasily, as if he had said too much.

“Thar ye go, Hiram, and ye talk of others gabblin’!  So ye might as well tell the young feller how that thar ain’t but one way, and that’s the way Harry takes, too, when he comes yer oncet in an age to talk to his own flesh and blood, and see a Christian face that ain’t agin him!”

Mr. Tarbox was silent.  “Ye know whar the tree was thrown down on the road,” he said at last.

“Yes.”

“The mountain rises straight up on the right side of the road, all hazel brush and thorn—­whar a goat couldn’t climb.”

“Yes.”

“But that’s a lie! for thar’s a little trail, not a foot wide, runs up from the road for a mile, keepin’ it in view all the while, but bein’ hidden by the brush.  Ye kin see everything from thar, and hear a teamster spit on the road.”

“Go on,” said Brice impatiently.

“Then it goes up and over the ridge, and down the other side into a little gulch until it comes to the canyon of the North Fork, where the stage road crosses over the bridge high up.  The trail winds round the bank of the Fork and comes out on the left side of the stage road about a thousand feet below it.  That’s the valley and hollow whar Harry lives, and that’s the only way it can be found.  For all along the left of the stage road is a sheer pitch down that thousand feet, whar no one kin git up or down.”