His route lay directly over the road which David had traversed.

The man's name was Adam Myers.

He was a jovial fellow, and at once won the heart of the vagrant boy.
David soon entered into a bargain with Myers, and turned back with him.
The state of mind in which the boy was may be inferred from the following extract taken from his autobiography.

I omit the profanity, which was ever sprinkled through all his utterances: "I often thought of home, and, indeed, wished bad enough to be there.
But when I thought of the school-house, and of Kitchen, my master, and of the race with my father, and of the big hickory stick he carried, and of the fierceness of the storm of wrath I had left him in, I was afraid to venture back.

I knew my father's nature so well, that I was certain his anger would hang on to him like a turtle does to a fisherman's toe.