"Oh, how thrilling!" cried Nancy, breathing very fast. She had an uncontrollable desire to halt Webb and the Freedom stage right on the spot in order to write to Claire Wallace. But at that moment, around the turn by the old oak galloped a horse and rider. Because it was the first living creature Nancy had seen since leaving North Hero, she was startled.
"Hey there, Webb," the rider cried, whirling out of the path of the old wagon.
And Webb called back in cheery greeting: "Hey, Pete!"
Through the cloud of dust Nancy had caught a glimpse of a pair of merry eyes set deep in a face as brown as the dark shirt the man wore. Turning impulsively in her seat she noticed, with an unexplainable sense of pleasure, that the bare head of the rider was exceptionally well shaped and covered with short curly hair. Then, to her sudden discomfiture, the rider wheeled directly in the road and pulled his horse up short.
It was, of course, because he was the first real person she had seen on this big lonely Island that prompted her to nod ever so slightly in response to his friendly wave! Then she turned discreetly back to Webb.
"Who is he?" she asked, in what she tried to make an indifferent tone.
"Peter Hyde an' as nice a young fellar as ever come to Freedom! Ain't been here much more'n a week and knows everybody. He's old man Judson's hired man and he's goin' to make somethin' of that ten-acre strip of Judson's some day or my name ain't Cyrenus Webb!"
"Judson's hired man!" cried Nancy, chagrined. What would Anne think of her—to have recognized, even in the slightest degree, the impertinence of this fellow! Her face burned at the thought.
"Seems to have a lot of learnin' but he's awful simple like and a hustler. Nobody knows whereabouts he come from—jes' dropped by out of some advertisement old Judson put in the papers up Burlington way."
"Tell me more about Freedom," broke in Nancy with dignity. "Is it a very old place?"