He turned on his side, and the light went up sharply. A man riding a
beautiful and spirited horse was coming over the hilltop. Horse and
rider paused a moment upon the crest, standing clear against the eastern
sky. In the crystal air and the sunset glow they crowned the hill like a
horse and rider nobly done in bronze. A moment thus, then they began to
pick their way down the rocky road. Lewis Rand looked, and started to
his feet. That horse had been bred in Albemarle, and that horseman he
had met in Richmond. The boy's heart beat fast and the colour surged to
his cheek. There was little, since the hour in the bookshop, that he
would not have done or suffered for the approaching figure. All along
the road from Richmond his imagination had conjured up a score of
fantastic instances, in each of which he had rescued, or died for, or
had in some impossibly romantic and magnificent fashion been the
benefactor of the man who was drawing near to the river and camp-fire.
As superbly generous as any other youth, he was, at present, in his
progress through life, in the land of shrines. He must have his idol,
must worship and follow after some visible hero, some older, higher,
stronger, more subtle-fine and far-ahead adventurer. Heretofore, in his
limited world, Adam Gaudylock had seemed nearest the gates of escape.
But Adam, he thought, was of the woods and the earth, even as his father
was, and as the tobacco was, and as he himself was. His enormous need
was for some one to follow whose feet were above the fat, red fields and
the leafy trails. All this was present with him as he watched the
oncoming figure. Great men kept their word. Had not Mr. Jefferson said
that he would overtake them?--and there he was! He was coming down to
the camp-fire, he was going to stop and talk to the surly giant, like
Giant Despair, who sat and smoked beside it.

Lewis Rand left the river and the windy sycamore and hastened across the
sere grass. "Father, father!" he cried. "Do you know who that is?" In