Explore "The Captain's Toll-Gate" by Frank R. Stockton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
When the captain reached Glenford, and before he went to the Ports' he went to the telegraph-office, and made inquiries at various other places, but his niece had not been seen in town. He wandered about so long and asked so many questions that it was getting dark when he suddenly thought of the shunpike. He had not thought of it before, for it was an unfit road for bicycles, but now he saw that he had been a fool. That was the only way she could have gone back.
Hurrying to a livery-stable, he hired a horse and buggy and a lantern, and drove to the shunpike. There he plainly saw the track of the bicycle as it had turned into that rough road. Then he drove on, examining every foot of the way, fearful that he might see, lying senseless by the side of the road, the figure of a girl, perhaps unconscious from fatigue, perhaps dead from an accident.