All the while he was
drawing nearer the carriage, for all that, somewhere or other, it had
plainly changed horses.
At last he made up his mind that he would overtake it in the next seven
miles; and he bucketed the car along for all she was worth. At the end
of the seven miles he had not overtaken it, nor was there any
appearance of it on the road before him, a level stretch of two miles.
However, he ran on another five miles, and there was no sign of it, nor
had anyone he passed or met, seen it. Plainly he had overshot it.
He turned the car, and came back, stopping to examine branch roads for
its wheel-tracks, losing the ground he had made up. Some seven miles
back, he came to a road leading to a great gap in the hills. A little
girl was feeding a few lean sheep at the corner of it. No: she had
seen no carriage; she had only been here a little while: the road ran
up to Camporossa. Tinker considered it, and it invited his search. It
went high into the hills, and he saw little towns here and there on
their sides. He sent the car slowly down it. For seventy yards the
roadway was hard, or stony; then came a patch of dust, smooth and
unmarked by a wheel-track. Any vehicle going along the road must have
passed over it, and a wave of disappointment submerged Tinker's spirit;
the road had seemed so very much the right one.
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