The girl, starting at these words with alacrity, switched her pony and darted to the head of the little party, as if addressing herself to her duty in a business-like way; and there she maintained her position with great zeal, although Roland and Edith endeavoured, for kindness’ sake, to make her sensible they desired her to ride with them as a companion, and not at a distance, like a pioneer.  The faster they spurred, however, the more zealously she applied her switch, and her pony being both spirited and fresh, while their own horses were both not a little the worse for their long journey, she managed to keep in front, maintaining a gait that promised in a short time to bring them to the banks of the river.

They had ridden perhaps a mile in this manner, when a sudden opening in the cane-brake on the right hand, at a place where stood a beech-tree, riven by a thunderbolt in former years, but still spreading its shattered ruins in the air, convinced Roland that he had at last reached the road to the Lower Ford, which Bruce had so strictly cautioned him to avoid.  What, therefore, was his surprise, when Telie, having reached the tree, turned at once into the by-road, leaving the direct path which they had so long pursued, and which still swept away before them, as spacious and uninterrupted, save by occasional pools, as ever.

“You are wrong,” he cried, checking his steed.

“This is the road, sir,” said the girl, though in some trepidation.

“By no means,” said Forrester, “that path leads to the Lower Ford; here is the shivered beech, which the colonel described to me.”

“Yes, sir,” said Telie, hurriedly; “it is the mark; they call it the Crooked Finger-post.”

“And a crooked road it is like to lead us, if we follow it,” said Roland.  “It leads to the Lower Ford, and is not therefore our road.  I remember the Colonel’s direction.”

“Yes, sir,” said Telie, anxiously,—­“to take the beech on the right shoulder, and then down four miles, to the water.”

“Precisely so,” said the soldier; “with only this difference (for, go which way we will, the tree being on the right side of each path, we must still keep it on the right shoulder), that the road to the Upper Ford, which I am now travelling, is the one for our purposes.  Of this I am confident.”

“And yet, Roland,” said Edith, somewhat alarmed at this difference of opinion, where unanimity was so much more desirable, “the young woman should know best.”

“Yes!” cried Telie, eagerly; “I have lived here almost seven years, and been across the river more than as many times.  This is the shortest and safest way.”

“It may be both the shortest and safest,” said Forrester, whose respect for the girl’s knowledge of the woods and ability to guide him through them, began to be vastly diminished; “but this is the road Mr. Bruce described.  Of this I am positive; and to make the matter still more certain, if need be, here are horse-tracks, fresh, numerous, scarcely washed by the rain, and undoubtedly made by our old companions; whereas that path seems not to have been trodden for a twelve-month.”