Thornton laughed and slowed down.

"I don't fancy it's used much, except in the winter for logging. But if
the map says we can get through, I guess we're all right--there's about
an eight mile stretch of it."

It was growing dusk, and the shadows, fanciful and picturesque; were
deepening around them. Now it showed a solid mass of green ahead, and,
like a sylvan path, the road, converging in the distance, lost itself in
a wall of foliage; now it swerved rapidly, this way and that, in short
curves, as though, like one lost, it sought its way.

A half hour passed. Thornton stopped the car, got down and lighted his
lamps, then started on again. The going had seemed to be growing
steadily worse--the road, as Thornton had said, was little more indeed
than a logging trail through the heart of the woods; and now, deeper in,
with increasing frequency, the tires slipped and skidded on damp, moist
earth that at times approached very nearly to being oozy mud.

Silence for a long while had held between them. It was taking Thornton
all his time now to guide the car, that, negotiating fallen branches
strewn across the way, bad holes and ruts, was crawling at a snail's
pace.

"'Rough but passable'!" he laughed once, clambering back to his seat
after clearing away a dead tree-trunk from in front of them. "But
there's no use trying to go back, as we must be halfway through, and it
can't be any worse ahead than it's been behind. I'd like to tell the
fellow that made this map something!"