It could be seen by a glance at his rather finical style of dress that
he did not belong to the country proper; and from his air, after a
while, that though there might be a sombre beauty in the scenery, music
in the breeze, and a wan procession of coaching ghosts in the sentiment
of this old turnpike-road, he was mainly puzzled about the way. The
dead men's work that had been expended in climbing that hill, the
blistered soles that had trodden it, and the tears that had wetted it,
were not his concern; for fate had given him no time for any but
practical things.

He looked north and south, and mechanically prodded the ground with his
walking-stick. A closer glance at his face corroborated the testimony
of his clothes. It was self-complacent, yet there was small apparent
ground for such complacence. Nothing irradiated it; to the eye of the
magician in character, if not to the ordinary observer, the expression
enthroned there was absolute submission to and belief in a little
assortment of forms and habitudes.

At first not a soul appeared who could enlighten him as he desired, or
seemed likely to appear that night. But presently a slight noise of
laboring wheels and the steady dig of a horse's shoe-tips became
audible; and there loomed in the notch of the hill and plantation that
the road formed here at the summit a carrier's van drawn by a single
horse. When it got nearer, he said, with some relief to himself, "'Tis
Mrs. Dollery's--this will help me."