at
Rollo should ask leave for Jonas and himself to go across on horseback,
and wait for the chaises, when they should come out on the main road.

So they rode up to the chaise, and Rollo put the question to his uncle
George.

His reply was that he could not say any thing about it; Rollo must go
and ask his father.

"Would you go?" said Jonas.

"Yes," said Rollo.

"Well, touch up Old Trumpeter then."

So Rollo applied his switch, and the horse trotted on fast. Rollo had
hard work to hold on, but he clasped his arm tight around Jonas's waist,
and succeeded in keeping his seat.

Rollo's father and mother were riding some distance before them, but
they saw Jonas coming up, and rode slowly, that he might overtake them.

"Well, Rollo," said his father, "how do you like riding double?"

"Very much," said Rollo; "and we want you to let Jonas and I cut across
by the horse-path through the valley, and wait for you at the mill."

"Is there a horse-path across here, Jonas?"

"Yes, sir," said Jonas.

"Is it a good path?"

"It is rather rough, sir, through the woods and bushes; but it is a
pretty good road."

Rollo's father sat hesitating a moment, and then said--

"You may go, if you choose, but I advise you not to."

"Why do you advise us not to?" said Rollo.

"Why, you may get into some difficulty, and so we get separated."

"Yes, but," said Rollo, "it is not near so far across, and we shall have
time to get through to the mill long before you come along."

"Very well, you may do as you please."

"Jonas, what would you do? Would you go, or not?"

"I think I would _not_ go, if your father thinks we had better not."

"I want to go very much," said Rollo.

"Very well," said his father; "you are willing to go with him, I
suppose, Jonas, are you not?"

"O yes, sir," said Jonas.

"Well," said Rollo, "let us go. We will he very careful, father, not to
get into any difficulty."

So the two chaises rode on, and Jonas and Rollo, in a few minutes,
turned off by a narrow path that struck into the woods. Just as they
were bending down their heads to pass under a great branch of a tree,
Rollo looked along, and saw Lucy waving her handkerchief to him, as the
chaise which she was in disappeared by a turn of the road.

Rollo at first felt a little uneasy to think that he had deserted his
cousin, as it were. He thought that he should not have liked it exactly,
if she had gone off, and left him alone so in the chai