“Why should she work?” I asked, with my grasp still on the reins.

“Them all does,” he answered, taking a fresh bite of the straw.  “It’s the best cure for sorrow, they say.  Or mebbe she’s a-teachin’ the children.  I see a powerful sight of children comin’ along while you was in there talkin’, a-goin’ to their school, and I tried to ask some o’ them about her.  But the old sheep who was drivin’ on ’em looked at me like vinegar, and I thought I’d better shet up, or mebbe she’d give the alarm that we was here with horses and wagon to carry her off.”

I had a painful moment of indecision as Hiram paused in his narrative and leisurely proceeded to evict a fly from the near horse’s ear.  “I think we’ll go on, Hiram,” I said, jumping back to my seat again.  “Take the river-road.”

Hiram had brought plentiful provision for his horses in a bag under the seat.  “Victualed for a march or a siege,” he said as he dragged out a tin kettle from the same receptacle when we drew up by the roadside an hour after.  “We’re clear of them pryin’ Shakers, and we’ll just rest a spell.”

I could not demur, though my impatience was urging me on faster than his hungry horses could go.

“I told Susan,” he said, “to put me up a bit of pie and cheese—­mebbe we wouldn’t be back afore night.  Won’t you hev’ some?—­there’s a plenty.”

But I declined the luncheon, and while he munched away contentedly, and while the horses crunched their corn, I got out and walked on, telling Hiram to follow at his leisure.  My heart beat fast as I espied a wagon in the distance with one—­yes, two—­Shaker bonnets in it.  Bessie in masquerade!  Perhaps so—­it could not be the other:  that would be too horrible.  But she was coming, surely coming, and the cold prim sister had told the truth, after all.

The wagon came nearer.  In it were two weather-beaten dames, neither of whom could possibly be mistaken for Bessie in disguise; and the lank, long-haired brother who was driving them looked ignorant as a child of anything save the management of his horses.  I hailed them, and the wagon drew up at the side of the road.

It was the women who answered in shrill, piping voices:  “Ben to Watervliet?  Nay, they’d ben driving round the country, selling garden seeds.”

“Did they know Bessie Stewart, who was staying in the Shaker village, in the house by the bridge?”

“Sure, there had ben a stranger woman come there some time ago:  they could not tell—­never heerd her name.”

I was forced to let them drive on after I had exhausted every possible inquiry, trusting that Hiram, who was close behind, would have keener wit in questioning them, but Hiram, as it happened, did not come up to them at all.  They must have turned off into some farm-house lane before they passed him.  The afternoon wore on.  It grew toward sunset, and still we kept the river-road.  There was no trace of the Shaker wagon, and indeed the road was growing wild and lonely.