bell of the Bird in Hand rang again, and the white men went to dinner.

Following the venison, the tart, and apple brandy came the short, bright
afternoon, passed by Lewis Rand upon the brig from the Indies with Tom
Mocket and little Vinie and a wrinkled skipper who talked of cocoanuts
and strange birds and red-handkerchiefed pirates, and spent by Gideon
first in business with the elder Mocket, and then in conversation with
Adam Gaudylock. Lewis, returning at supper-time to the Bird in Hand,
found the hunter altered no whit from his habitual tawny lightness, but
his father in a mood that he knew, sullen and silent. "Adam's been
talking to him," thought the boy. "And it's just the same as when Mrs.
Selden talks to him. Let me go--not he!"

In the morning, at six of the clock, the two Rands, the negro Joab, the
horses, and the dogs took the homeward road to Albemarle. Adam Gaudylock
was not returning with them; he had trader's business with the merchants
in Main Street, hunter's business with certain cronies at the Indian
Queen, able scout and man-of-information business in Governor Street,
and business of his own upon the elm-shaded walk above the river. Over
level autumn fields and up and down the wooded hills, father and son and
the slave travelled briskly toward the west. As the twilight fell, they
came up with three white wagons, Staunton bound, and convoyed by
mountaineers. That night they camped with these men in an expanse of
scrub and sassafras, but left them at dawn and went on toward Albemarle.
A day of coloured woods, of infrequent clearings, and of streams to
ford, ended in an evening of cool wind and rosy sky. They descended a
hill, halted, and built their fire in a grassy space beside a river.
Joab tethered the horses and made the fire, and fried the bacon and
baked the hoecake. As he worked he sang:--