Page:Mistress Madcap Surrenders (1926).pdf/247



EHITABLE was off through the murky, storm-threatened twilight. Shreds of lightning beyond the Mountain showed that thunder heads still existed there, that the storm had not yet passed on over Newark and Bergen Heights to its usual destination, the Hudson Valley.

She had left Charity at the Condit gate, had dug her slipper heels into Dulcie's sides, and now she was slowing down before the Briggs's house, deserted since the Tory, Elijah Briggs, had been sent to Staten Island by order of the government. The Briggs's farmhouse was at the junction of the Second Road, which followed the foot of the Mountain across the Orange Valley, and Fifth Road, which dwindled as it ascended steeply up the side of the Mountain into a mere narrow Indian trail. Mehitable debated the question briefly—should she ride straight over the hills to the Short Hills road or should she follow the more traveled road to Millburn and so to the Sow's Back? Presently, she shook her head.

"The longest way be the shortest," she mur-