Oh, look, we've changed! Where do you suppose he is going? This can't
nearly be Bramant's."
The mainsail had been hauled in, and the course of the sloop changed,
quartering in toward the shore. The youth, moving forward, stopped to
enlighten them. He jerked a thumb in the direction of the old man.
"He's got kin here at Jerico," he explained; "and we're setting in to
see them. We won't stop long."
The mainsail came smoothly down, the jib fluttered, and the sloop slid
in beside a sturdy old wharf, projecting from a deep fringe of willows.
No sign of life or habitation was visible.
The youth made fast a hawser, the old man mounted painfully to the
dock, and Indy stirred and rose.
"I must have just winked asleep," she declared in consternation.
Rosemary Roselle lightly left the boat, and Elim followed. "If we
explored," he proposed, "perhaps we could get you a cup of coffee." She
elected, however, to stay by the river, and Elim went inward alone.
Beyond the willows was an empty marshland. The old man had disappeared,
with no trace of his objective kin. A road, deep in yellow mire,
mounted a rise beyond and vanished a hundred yards distant. Elim,
unwilling to get too far away from the sloop, had turned and moved
toward the wharf, when he was halted by the sound of horses' hoofs.
He saw approaching him over the road a light open carriage with a
fringed canopy and a pair of horses driven by a negro in a long white
dust coat.
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