PART IVCAMPING AMONG THE NEW ENGLAND HILLS

THE VILLAGE CHURCH

It was nine o’clock when I left Old Hadley in Central Massachusetts and turned northward up the valley. A cold wind was blowing, and many gray cloud-masses were sailing overhead. The region about was one of the fairest in New England,—a wide, fertile valley basin stretching twenty miles in either direction. The Connecticut River loops through it with many graceful curves, and blue ranges of hills bound it on every side. At intervals of about ten miles on this level you come upon the few scores of houses, which cluster about the churches at the centre of the towns, and there are many little hamlets where are lesser groups of homes.

ONE OF THE HUMBLER HOUSES

I was jogging across some meadows, when I came to a few houses flanked by numerous out-buildings and half hidden by the trees about them. Some children were by the roadside. They had rakes and a big basket, and were intent on gathering the maple leaves which carpeted the ground. They stopped to watch me as I approached.

“Take my picture,” cried a stout little girl, and then threw the basket over her head and struck an attitude.

“All right,” was my reply.

“Oh!” she said, “I want my cat in,” and raced off to the house to secure it.

A DESERTED HOME

She was no sooner back and in position than she found a new trouble. She had on a little cap with a very narrow visor, and as the sun had now come out, its bright light made her eyes wink. Suddenly she spoke up and said the little cap made her cry, and wanted to get a hat, if I would let her. When she returned I made haste to snap the camera before any other ideas could occur to her. We were pretty well acquainted by the time I finished, and she wanted to know how much I charged for my picture, and said she guessed she would get one if I came that way again.

The town of Sunderland lay a little beyond. It is a typical valley town, with a long, wide street lined by elms and maples, thickset on either side by the whitehouses of its people. Everything looked thrifty and well kept. The wind blew gustily, and sometimes would start the leaves which had just begun to strew the ground beneath and send windrows of them scurrying along the road like live armies on a charge.

GETTING A LOAD OF SAWDUST BACK OF THE SAW-MILL

I was in the village in the late afternoon, when school let out. It was interesting to note the way the boys came down the street slamming about, shouting, and tripping each other up. It seemed to me there was one sort of youngster who had need to reform. You find this variety in every village where half a dozen boys can get together. He talks in a loud voice when any witnesses or a stranger is about, is rude to his fellows, jostles them and orders them about, cracks crude jokes, either exceedingly pointless, or else of great age and worn threadbare, at which he himself has to do a good share of the laughing. He is, in short, showing off, and the show is a very poor one. He makes himself both disagreeable and ridiculous to most, and can only win admiration from a few weak-minded companions or overawed small boys. He is apt to grow into something of a bully among those weaker than himself, and to become, when older, a young man with a swagger.

A MEADOW STREAM

It was October, the days were short, and I had early to seek a stopping-place for the night. It still lacked something of supper-time when I put my horse out at one of the farm-houses,and I took the opportunity for a walk on the village street. The damp gloom of evening had settled down. There were lights in the windows and movements at the barns, and a team or two was jogging homeward along the road. Westward, in plain sight across the river, was the heavy spur of a mountain, dark against the evening sky. A single little light was trembling on the summit of the crag. This came from a building known as “the prospect house.” The proprietor lives there the year around, and from Sunderland’s snug street, on cold winter nights, the light is still to be seen sending out shivering rays into the frosty darkness.

A HOME UNDER THE ELMS

I returned presently to the house and had supper. That finished, the small boy of the family brought a cup of boiled chestnuts, and while we munched them, explained how he had picked up eighty-one quarts of nuts so far that year. In his pocket the boy had other treasures. He pulled forth a handful of horse-chestnuts, and told me they grew on a little tree down by the burying-ground.

“The boys up at our school make men of ’em,” he said. “They take one chestnut and cut a face on it like you do on a pumpkin for a jack-o’-lantern. That’s the head. Then they take a bigger one and cut two or three places in front for buttons, and make holes to stick intoothpicks for legs, and they stick in more for arms, and with a little short piece fasten the head on the body. Then they put ’em up on the stove-pipe where the teacher can’t get ’em, and they stay there all day. Sometimes they make caps for ’em.” He got out his jack-knife and spent the rest of the evening manufacturing these queer little men for my benefit.

A DOOR-STEP GROUP

The next morning I turned eastward and went along the quiet, pleasant roads, now in the woods, now among pastures where the wayside had grown up to an everchanging hedge of bushes and trees. Much of the way was uphill, and I sometimes came out on open slopes which gave far-away glimpses over the valley I had left behind.

About noon I stopped to sketch one of the picturesque watering-troughs of the region. There was a house close by, and a motherly looking old lady peeked out at me from the door to discover what I was up to. I asked if I might stay to dinner. She said I might if I would be content with their fare, and I drove around to the barn. An old gentlemanand his hired man were pounding and prying at a big rock which protruded above the surface right before the wagon-shed. They had blasted it, and were now getting out the fragments. By the time I had my horse put out, dinner was ready, and we all went into the house. We had “a boiled dinner,”—potatoes, fat pork, cabbage, beets, and squash all cooked together. The dish was new to me, but I found it quite eatable.

I was again on the road, jogging comfortably along, when I noticed two little people coming across a field close by. They walked hand in hand, and each carried a tin pail of apples. The boy was a stout little fellow, and the girl, a few sizes smaller, very fat and pudgy and much bundled up. I told them I’d like to take their pictures. They didn’t know what to make of that; but I got to work, and they stood by the fence looking at me very seriously. I was nearly ready when a woman from the doorway of a house a little ways back called out, “Go right along, Georgie! Don’t stop!” I told her I wanted to make their photographs—it wouldn’t take but a minute. She said they ought to be dressed up more for that. But I said they looked very nice as they were, and hastened to get my picture. Then the two went toddling on. The boy told me there was a big pile of apples back there; also, as I was starting away, that his father had just bought a horse.

A ROADSIDE FRIEND

I took the sandy long hill way toward Shutesbury, a place famous for miles about for its huckleberry crops. It is jokingly said that this is its chief source of wealth, and the story goes that “One year the huckleberry crop failed up in Shutesbury, and the people had nothin’ to live on and were all comin’ on to the town, and the selectmen were so scared at the responsibility, they all run away.”

The scattered houses began to dot the way as I proceeded, and after a time I saw the landmarks of the town centre—the two churches, perched on the highest, barest hilltop eastward. The sun was getting low, and chilly evening was settling down. Children were coming home from school; men, who had been away, were returning to do up their work about the house and barnbefore supper, and a boy was driving his cows down the street. I hurried on over the hill and trotted briskly down into the valley beyond, but it was not long before the road again turned upward. The woods were all about. In the pine groves, which grew in patches along the way, the ground was carpeted with needles, and the wheels and horse’s hoofs became almost noiseless. There were openings now and then through the trunks and leafage, and I could look far away to the north-east, and see across a wide valley the tree-covered ridges patched with evergreens, and the ruddy oak foliage rolling away into ranges of distant blue, and, beyond all, Mount Monadnock’s heavy pyramid. The sun was behind the hill I was climbing, and threw a massive purple shadow over the valley. Beyond, the ridges were flooded with clear autumn sunlight. Far off could be seen houses, and a church now and then—bits of white, toy-like, in the distance. The eastward shadows lengthened, the light in the woods grew cooler and grayer, and just as I was fearing darkness would close down on me in the woods, I turned a corner and the hill was at an end. There were houses close ahead, and off to the left two church steeples.

BETTER THAN HOEING ON A HOT DAY

This was New Salem. The place had no tavern, but I was directed to one of the farm-houses which was in the habit of keeping “transients.” There was only a boy at home. His folks were away, and he had built a fire in the kitchen and was fussing around, keeping an eye on the window in expectation of the coming of the home team. It arrived soon after, and in came his mother and sister, who had been to one of the valley towns trading and visiting. The father was over at “the other farm,” but he came in a little later. Mrs. Cogswell told of the day’s happenings, andhow she had found a knife by the roadside. It was “kind of stuck up,” and she said she would bet some old tobacco-chewer owned it. However, Mr. Cogswell, having smelt of it, guessed not.

JULY

His wife now brought in a blanket she had bought at the “Boston Store,” and we all examined it, felt of it, and guessed what it was worth. Then she told what she paid, and how cheap she could get various other things, and what apples would bring.

THE PET OF THE FARM

As we sat chatting after supper, Mr. Cogswell took out his watch and began to wind it. It was of the Waterbury variety, and winding took a long time, and gave him a chance to discourse of watches in general, and of this kind in particular. Frank had such a watch, he said, and he took it to pieces and it was about all spring.

“You never saw such a thing,” said Mrs. Cogswell. “Why, it sprung out as long as this table.”

“Ho, as long as this table!” said Mr. Cogswell; “it would reach ’wayacross the room.” He said his own watch kept very good time as a general thing, only it needed winding twice a day.

A RAINY DAY

I was out early the next morning. The east still held some soft rose tints, streaks of fog lingered in the valley, and the frost still whitened the grass. After breakfast I went northward, down through the woods and pastures, into Miller’s valley. I followed a winding ravine in which a mountain brook went roaring over its uneven bed toward the lowland. I came into the open again at the little village of Wendell Depot. It was a barren little clearing, I found, wooded hills all about, a railroad running through, several bridges, and a dam with its rush and roar of water; a broad pond lay above, and below, the water foamed and struggled and slid away beneath the arches of a mossy stone bridge, and hurried on to pursue its winding way to the Connecticut. There was a wooden mill by the stream-side. It was a big, square structure with dirty walls and staring rows of windows. No trees were about, only the ruins of a burned paper-mill, whose sentinel chimney still stood, a blackened monument of the fire. There were a few of the plain houses built by the mill for its help, a hotel, some sand-banks, a foreign population, a dark, hurrying river, the roar of a dam, long lines of freight-cars moving through, and grim hills reaching away toward the sky.

From here I went westward, and in the early afternoon crossed the Connecticut River and began to follow up the valley of the Deerfield. Ihad to go over a big mountain ridge, but after that had comparatively level travelling. I went on till long after sunset, and presently inquired of a man I met walking if there were houses on ahead. He said Solomon Hobbs owned the nearest place, and lived up a big hill a ways off the main road. A little after I met a team, and concluded to make more definite inquiry. “Can you tell me where Mr. Hobbs lives?” I asked.

“Who, John?” he questioned as he pulled in his horse.

“No, Solomon,” I replied.

“Oh, er, Solly! He lives right up the hill here. Turn off the next road and go to the first house.”

A HAMLET AMONG THE HILLS

It was quite dark now, and when I came to the steep, rough rise of the hill I got out and walked and led the horse. In time I saw a light on ahead, and I drove into the steep yard. I had my doubts about stopping there when I saw how small the house and barn were. A man responded to my knock on the door and acknowledged to the name of Solomon Hobbs. He was a tall, broad-shouldered, long-bearded farmer, apparently about fifty years of age. He had on heavy boots and was in his checked shirt-sleeves. He didn’t know about keeping me overnight, but their supper wasjust ready, and I might stay to that if I wanted to. He directed me to hitch my horse to a post of the piazza and come in. On a low table was spread a scanty meal. Codfish was the most prominent dish on the board. After eating, I was ushered into the little parlor, for they had certain pictures of the scenery thereabout they wished me to see. Mr. Hobbs brought along his lantern and set it on the mantel-piece. It remained there though Mrs. Hobbs came in and lit a gaudy hanging-lamp. She was a straight little woman with short hair, rather curly and brushed up, wore earrings, did not speak readily, and acted as if her head did not work first-rate. The little boy, who was the third member of the family, came in also. There was an iron, open fireplace with charred sticks, ashes, and rubbish in it. The carpet on the floor seemed not to be tacked down, and it gathered itself up in bunches and folds. The sofa and marble-topped centre-table and many of the chairs were filled with papers, books, boxes, and odds and ends.

SUMMER SUNLIGHT IN A “GORGE ROAD”

There was some doubt as to where the pictures were, and it required considerable hunting in books and albums and cupboards and boxes and top-shelves to produce them. I did not notice that they put up any of the things they pulled down. Mr. Hobbs said of his wife that she had been in poorhealth for a year past, and hadn’t been able to keep things in order. When I had examined the pictures I got ready to start on. Mr. Hobbs said there was a hotel a mile up the road. I unhitched my horse, and the little boy, with a lantern, ran before me and guided me through the gateway.

ONE OF THE LITTLE RIVERS

At the hotel, when I had made the horse comfortable in the barn I betook myself to the bar-room, where a brisk open fire was burning. A number of men were loafing there, most of them smoking. One was a tall, stout-figured man who was always ready to back his opinion with a bet of a certain number of dollars, and quoted knowledge gained a year when he was selectman to prove statements about the worth of farms.

The proprietor of the place was a young man, with small eyes rather red with smoke or something else, a prominent beaklike nose, a mustache, and receding chin. He had an old, straight, short coat on, and he had thin legs, and looked very much like some sort of a large bird. He had a very sure way of speaking, and emphasized this sureness by the manner in which he would withdraw his cigar, half close his little eyes, and puff forth a thin stream of tobacco smoke.

In the morning I was out just as the sun looked over some cloud layers at the eastern horizon and brightened up the misty landscape. I left the hotel, and soon was on my way up the Deerfield River into the mountains. It was a fine day, clear at first, and with many gray clouds sailing later. I jogged on up and down the little hills on the road which kept along the winding course of the river. All the way was hemmed in by great wooded ridges which kept falling behind, their places to be filled by new ones at every turn. The stream made its noisy way over its rough bed, and every now and then a freight train would go panting up the grade toward the Hoosac Tunnel, or a passenger train in swifter flight would sweep around the curve and hurry away to the world beyond.

THE VILLAGE GROCERYMAN

A little off the road in one place was a log house, a sight so unusual in old Massachusetts that such rare ones as one may come across always have a special air of romance and interest about them. This had a pleasant situation on a level, scooped out by nature from the lofty ridge which over-shadowed it. It was made of straight, small logs, laid up cob-fashion, chinked with pieces of boards and made snugger with plaster on the inside. It had a steep roof of overlapping boards, through which a length of rusty stove-pipe reached upwards and smoked furiously. There was a spring before thedoor, which sent quite a little stream of water through a V-shaped trough into an old flour-barrel. There were some straggling apple-trees about, and behind the house a little slab barn. Inside was a bare room, floored with unplaned boards. There was a bed in one corner, a pine table in another, and a rude ladder led to a hole in the upper flooring, where was a second room. The only occupant then about was cooking dinner on the rusty stove. Light found its way through two square windows and through certain cracks and crevices in the wall.

I followed the rapid river, on, up among the wild tumble of mountains which raised their gloomy rock-ribbed forms on every side. The regions seemed made by Titans, and for the home of rude giants, not of men. Presently a meadow opened before me, and across it lay the little village of Hoosac. The great hills swept up skyward from the level, and here and there in the cleared places you could see bits of houses perched on the dizzy slope, and seeming as if they might get loose and come sliding down into the valley almost any day.

AN OUTLYING VILLAGE

At the tunnel was a high railroad bridge spanning the river, a long freight train waiting, a round signal station, a few houses, and the lines of iron rails running into the gloomy aperture in the side of the hill. This was in a sort of ravine, and so somewhat secluded and holding little suggestionof its enormous length of over four miles. Some sheep were feeding on a grassy hillside just across the track, and looking back upon them they made a very pretty contrast to the wild scenery. The hills mounded up all about; the sun in the west silvered the water of the rapid river; a train waiting below the iron span of the bridge sent up its wavering white plume of smoke; and here on the near grassy slope were the sheep quietly feeding.

The road wound on through the same romantic wildness; now a mountain would shoot up a peak steeper and higher than those surrounding; but none of them seemed to have names. As one of the inhabitants expressed it, “They are too common round here to make any fuss over.”

A VILLAGE VIEW IN A HALF-WOODED DELL

In the late afternoon, after a hard climb up the long hills, I passed Monroe Bridge, where in the deep ravine was a large paper-mill. The road beyond was muddy and badly cut up by teams, and progress was slow. I expected to spend the night at Monroe Church, which I understood was three miles farther up, but I got off the direct route and on to one of the side roads. The sun had disappeared behind the hills and a gray gloom was settling down. The road kept getting worse. It was full of ruts and bog-holes.Like most of the roads of the region, the way followed up a hollow, and had a brook by its side choked up with great boulders. I came upon bits of snow, and thought there were places where I could scrape up a very respectable snowball.

THE OLD WELL-SWEEP

After a time I met a team and stopped to inquire the way to the church, and the distance. The fellow hailed had a grocery wagon, and no doubt had been delivering goods. He seemed greatly pleased by my question; in fact, was not a little overcome, showed a white row of teeth beneath his mustache, and he quite doubled up in his amusement. He said he did not know where the church was; and he guessed I wasn’t much acquainted up in these parts; said he wasn’t either. He stopped to laugh between every sentence. He apparently thought he was the only man from the outside world who ever visited these regions, and now was tickled to death to find another fellow had blundered into his district. There was no church about there, he said; I must be pretty badly mixed up; this was South Readsboro’, Vermont. “This is the end of the earth,” he said. He kept on laughing as he contemplated me, and I got away up the road as soon as I could, while he, still chuckling to himself, drove down.

The snow patches become larger and more numerous, and soon Icame into an open and saw a village up the hill. This was October, and the sight ahead was strange and weird. The roofs of the buildings were white with snow; there were scattered patches of it all about, and a high pasture southward was completely covered. It seemed as if I had left realities behind; as if in some way I was an explorer in the regions of the far north; as if here was a little town taken complete possession of by the frost; as if no life could remain, and I would find the houses deserted or the inhabitants all frozen and dead. There was a little saw-mill here and some big piles of boards; everywhere marks of former life; but the premature frost seemed to have settled down like a shroud on all about. I entered the village and found a man working beside a house, and learned from him that I had still three miles to travel before I came to the church.

IN HAYING TIME

I took a steep southward road and led the horse, with frequent rests, up the hills. Darkness had been fast gathering, the sunset colors had faded, one bright star glowed in the west, and at its right a gloomy cloud mass reached up from the horizon. The neighboring fields got more and more snow-covered, until the black ribbon of the muddy road was about the only thing which marred their whiteness. There were rocky pastures about, intermitting with patches of woodland. Here and there were stiff dark lines of spruce along the hilltops, and these, with the white pastures, made the country seem like a bit of Norway. Snow clung to the evergreen arms of the spruces and whitened the upper fence-rails, and the muddy trail of the road ceased in the crisp whiteness.

I was going through a piece of woods when I saw a house ahead with a glow of light in a window. I went past the friendly light. The dreary road still stretched on. No church was in sight, and I drew up and ran back to the house. A man came to the back door with a lamp. He said it was still two miles to the church, and I asked if I might stay overnight. Soon I had my horse in the yard and was comfortably settled by the kitchen fire. The kitchen was large, but the long table, the stove, a bed, and the other furniture made it rather cramped when the whole familywere indoors. There were grandpa, and grandma, and “Hen” and his wife, and “Bucky,” and “Sherm,” and “Sis,” and Dan, and little Harry, not to mention a big dog and several cats. After supper, grandma fell to knitting with some yarn of her own spinning; grandpa smoked his pipe and told bear stories; “Hen” mended a broken ramrod so that his gun might be ready for a coon hunt he was planning; Mrs. “Hen” sewed; “Sherm” and “Bucky” were in a corner trying to swap hats, neckties, etc., and “Sis” was helping them; Dan ran some bullets which he made out of old lead-pipe melted in the kitchen fire; and Harry circulated all about, and put the cats through a hole cut for them in the cellar door, and climbed on the chairs along the walls, and picked away the plastering at sundry places where the lath was beginning to show through.

THE STREAM AND THE ELMS IN THE MEADOW

Bedtime came at nine and I was given a little room partitioned off in the unfinished second story. In the first gray of the next morning a loud squawking commenced outside of so harsh and sudden a nature as to be quite alarming to the unaccustomed ear. Later I learned this was the flock of ducksand geese which had gathered about the house to give a morning salute. The wind was whistling about, and came in rather freely at the missing panes in my window. As soon as I heard movements below I hastened downstairs. The two fellows in the bed in the unfinished part adjoining my room were still snoozing, and there were scattered heaps of clothing about the floor.

There was no one in the kitchen, and though the stove lid was off, no fire had yet been started. I heard old Mr. Yokes out in the back room.

UNDER THE OLD SYCAMORE

“’Bout time ye was gettin’ up,” he called to me.

“Yes,” I said, “I heard you stirring, and thought it must be about time to turn out.”

“Oh, it’s you, is it? I thought ’twas one of the boys. They didn’t bring in no kindlings last night.”

AUGUST

He sat down by the stove and went to whittling some shavings. He had not yet got on either shoes or stockings. One by one the rest of thefamily straggled in, and the fire began to glow and the heat to drive out the frostiness of the kitchen atmosphere. Outdoors the weather was threatening, and there were little drives of sleet borne down on the wings of the wind. After breakfast I concluded to leave this land of winter and followed down one of the steep roads into the autumn region of the Deerfield valley. By brisk travelling I succeeded by close of day in getting to the quiet meadows along the Connecticut. It had been a five days’ journey. I saw only a little patch of New England, and the description is necessarily fragmentary; but at least there is presented characteristic phases of its nature and life as the traveller on a leisurely journey may see them.

ONE OF THE OLD VILLAGE STREETS

Itwas a warm night of midsummer. In a secluded hollow of the Green Mountain ranges of lower Vermont was pitched a small white tent. A half-moon was shining softly through the light cloud-hazes overhead, and had you been there, you could have made out the near surroundings without much difficulty. Tall woods were all about, but here was a little open where grasses and ferns and low bushes grew in abundance, and on a chance level of the steep, uneven hillside the campers had pitched their tent. In the deep, tree-filled ravine close below was a stream, whence came the sound of its fretting among the rocks, and from a little farther up the solemn pounding of a waterfall. From the other direction came a different sound. It was the gentle clinking of a hammer on an anvil.On the farther side of the narrow strip of woods, which shut it from sight, was a farmhouse, and it was thence came the sound of hammering.

THE HOUSE WITH THE BARN ACROSS THE ROAD

A WARM SUMMER DAY

The tent has two occupants. They are both young fellows, who had on the day previous started from their Boston homes for a vacation trip to the woods. In the city they were clerks,—one in a store, the other in a bank. The chance that brought them to this particular spot for their vacation was this: a school friend of theirs, who was blessed (or perhaps otherwise) with more wealth than they, and who was next year to be a senior in Harvard, had informed them a few weeks previous that his folks were going to the Groveland House for the summer. This, he said, was in the centre of one of the prettiest and most delightful regions of all New England, and he urged his friends, Clayton and Holmes, to by all means go along too. He expatiated on the beauties of the place with such an eloquence (whether natural or acquired at Harvard, I know not) that these two gave up the idea of a trip they had been planning down the coast and turned their thoughts inland.

But when they came to study the hotel circular that Alliston gave them, and noted the cost of board per week, this ardor received a dampener.

“Phew!” said Holmes, “we can’t stand that. I don’t own our bank yet.”

“No, we can’t, that’s a fact,” said Clayton. “I’d want more of a raise in my pay than I expect to get for years before I could afford that sum. The dickens! I thought these country places were cheap always—and here’s a little place we’ve never heard of that charges more than half our big hotels here in Boston.”

AT WORK IN HER OWN STRAWBERRY PATCH

“Well, we’ve got to give up that idea, then,” Holmes said. “I suppose, though, we might find a place at some farmhouse that wouldn’t charge too high.”

“The trouble is,” Clayton responded, “that I don’t like to go poking off into a region where we don’t know a soul, and take our chances of finding a comfortable stopping-place at the right price. Then, you see, it’s going to cost like anything getting there—just the fare on the railroad. I don’t know as we ought to have considered the thing at all.”

SEPTEMBER

“I hate to give it up,” said Holmes. “We’ve seen a good deal of the shore, but have had hardly a sight of the country. It would be a great thing, for a change, to take that trip to Vermont. Now, why couldn’t we try camping out? That’s what the youngsters do in all the small boys’ books I’ve ever read. We’re rather older than the boys who were in the habit of doing that sort of thing in the books. But then, you know, that may be a good thing. It may have given us a chance to accumulate wisdom sufficient to avoid those hairbreadth adventures the youngsters were always having. They are good enough to read about, but deliver me from the experience.”

“Harry,” said Clayton, “I believe that’s a good idea.”

EVENING

The conversation and thinkings necessary to settle the details were many and lengthy, and I forbear repeating them. The long and short of it is that on Monday, August 14, in the earliest gray of the morning, they were on the train that was to carry them to the Vermont paradise they had in mind.

John Clayton, as luck would have it, worked in a dry-goods house, and therefore in planning a tent he was enabled to get the cloth for its makeup at a trifle above cost. He and Harry made numerous visits to the public library on spare evenings and consulted a variety of volumes devoted more or less directly to the science of camping out. The amount of information they got on the subject was rather bewildering, but they simplified it down to a few things absolutely necessary to think of beforehand, and concluded to trust to commonsense for solving further problems.

“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” said Harry, who attended Sunday-school regularly.

The cloth used for the tent was cotton drilling. John’s mother sewed the strips together under his direction, and their landlady allowed him to set it up in the little paved square of yard back of the block, and there he and Harry gave it a coat of paint to make it waterproof. The whole thing did not cost three dollars, and, as the boys said, “It’ll last usa good many seasons.” Aside from their tent they purchased a small hatchet, a ball of stout twine, a few nails, a lantern, and some tin pails, cups, and plates, and several knives, forks, and spoons.

A LOAD OF WOOD ON THE WAY UP TO THE VILLAGE

It had been a question just where their camping-place should be. “We can’t very well pitch our tent in the hotel yard,” said Harry. “That high-priced proprietor wouldn’t allow it, I’m sure; and, besides, we shouldn’t want to.”

Another perusal of the summering-place circular disclosed the fact that it gave a list of the attractions of the region about, with certain comments thereon. Among the rest was noted a waterfall seventy feet high. It was amid surroundings, so the circular said, exceedingly beautiful and romantic (whatever that may be). The boys thought that style of place would suit them to a T, and Harry, who carried the circular about in his pocket, got it out at the bank the next day after this decision was arrived at and underscored this waterfall with red ink.

In the late afternoon of August 14th the two were set down, “bag and baggage,” at the forlorn little station which was the railroad terminus of their journey. To the left was a high sand bluff, half cut away, crowned with a group of tall pines. A little up the tracks was a deep, stony ravine where a little river sent up a low murmur from the depths. This was spanned by a high railroad trestle, and when the train rumbled away across it and disappeared around the curve of a wooded slope, the boys watched the curls of smoke fade into thin air and felt a bit homesick. Beyond was a small freight-house, but no other buildings were in sight. It was a little clearing in the midst of the woods. The only path leading away was the road, which made a turn about the near sand bluff,and then was lost to sight. At the rear of the depot was a smart stage-coach, into which a group of people were being helped by a slick footman. This coach was an attachment of the Groveland House. “Were the young gentlemen bound for the hotel?”

“No,” said Clayton, “we’re not going to the hotel. Isn’t there any other coach?”

“Oh, yes, but that leaves here at two o’clock. It has a long route through the different villages, over the hills, delivering the mail and other truck. If it waited for the four-thirty train it would hardly get around before midnight.”

“We’re much obliged,” said Clayton, and the two went back to the front platform and sat down on their baggage.

“We won’t go up to that hotel if we have to pitch our tent here on the sand back of the depot,” said John.

A WATERFALL IN THE WOODS

They heard the coach rattle briskly away up the road, and the depot-master stamping around inside. He came out presently, and after locking the front door approached them. “Expectin’ some one to meet ye?” he asked. He was a stout figured man, with a smooth, round, good-natured face that won the boys’ confidence at once.

“No,” John said, “we don’t know any one about here. We came on a little camping trip. You see in Boston there are horse-cars running every which way that take you anywhere you want to go, and I s’pose we’ve got so used to them that we never thought of having any trouble in getting to the place we wanted to go to, though this is out in the country.”

“Oh, ye came from Boston, did ye? I kinder thought ye was city fellers. Guess ye’ll find horse-cars in these parts about as scarce as hen’s teeth—just about. Whare was ye thinkin’ of goin’, anyhow?”

“We were going to Rainbow Falls.”

“Rainbow Falls? Well, now, you’ve got me. I do’no’ as I ever heared of ’em. Where be they?”

Harry whipped out his circular. “Why, here they are,” he said. “See! right here under this heading, ‘Nature’s Attractions in the Drives about Groveland,’” and he pointed to the line underscored with red ink.

A PANORAMA HILLS AND VALLEYS

The station agent set down the two lanterns he had in his hand and drew a spectacle case from his vest pocket. “Sho,” said he, when he got his glasses adjusted, “‘Rainbow Falls,’ so ’tis. ‘Surroundings exceedingly beautiful and rheumatic’—er, no, it’sromantic it says, I guess; the letters is blotted a little. Seventy feet high, it says. Well, now, I don’t know what that is, unless it’s the falls over at Jones’ holler. The hotel folks have gone and put a new-fangled name onto it, I guess. There never’s been any ‘rainbow’ about it that I’ve ever heared of.”

“Is it a good place to camp out, should you think?” asked John.

“Well, yes; pretty good, if you like it,” was the reply. “Now, if you fellers want to get up there to-night, there’s some houses up the road here a few steps, and I presume ye can hire some one to get ya up there if ye want to.”

A PASTURE GROUP

“How far is it?” Harry asked.

“I should say it was five miles or something like that,” said the man; and he walked off down the track.

“Now,” said John, “we must wake up. I see no signs of houses, but we’ll follow up the road.”

The result was that a short walk brought them to a little group of habitations, and they accosted a farmer boy who was weeding in a garden and made known their wants. He would take them up, he said, if his folks would let him.

“How much would you charge?” asked Harry.

“Well, I do’no’,” said the boy. “It’s goin’ to be considerable trouble, and it’s a good five miles the shortest way, and hard travellin’, too, some of the way. I should think ’twould be worth thirty-five cents, anyhow.”

“We’ll pay you fifty,” said John, “if you’ll hurry up with your team.”

“I’ll have to ask ma first,” the boy replied.

He went to the house, and the two outside heard a low-toned conversation, and a woman looked out at them from behind some half-closed blinds. Then out came Jimmy with a rush and said he could go. He took pains to get his hoe from the garden, which he cleaned by rubbing off the dirt with his bare foot before hanging it up.

“Have ye got much luggage?” he asked. “’Cause if ye have we c’n take the rack wagon. The express wagon’s better, though, if ye haven’t got much. That old rack’s pretty heavy.”

The lighter vehicle, which proved to be a small market wagon, was plenty large enough, and into that was hitched the stout farm-horse, and the three boys clambered up to the seat.

“Git up!” cried Jimmy, cracking his whip, and away they rattled down to the depot.

“Now,” said Jimmy, “they’s two ways of gettin’ where you want to go, and when you get there they’s two places where you can go to. The road over Haley’s Hill is the nearest, but it’s so darn steep I’d about as soon drive up the side of a meeting-house steeple.”

“Then you’d rather go the other road, I suppose.”

“Well, I do’no’; that’s considerable more roundabout.”

“You can do as you please,” said John. “We’ll risk it, if you will.”

“I guess I’ll go over Haley’s Hill, then. But I reckon you fellers’ll get shook up some. ’Tain’t much more’n a wood-road, and they’s washouts on the downhill parts and bog-holes where its level that they’ve dumped brush and stuff into. You’ll have to walk up the steep parts. Don’t you want something to eat?” he then asked. “I brought along a pocketful of gingerbread, ’cause I knew I shouldn’t get home till after dark. Here,” and he pulled out a handful of broken fragments, “better have some.”

“Thank you,” said John; “but we had a rather late lunch on the cars, and I don’t think we’ll eat again till we get the tent pitched. What was it you said about there being two places up there we could go to?”

The boy took a mouthful of gingerbread, and when he got the process of mastication well under way he responded, “Well, there’s Jules’, and there’s Whitcomb’s. Jules’ is on one side of the brook and Whitcomb’s is on the other. Jules is the Frenchman, ye know.”

“Which place is best?”

OCTOBER

“I do’no’ ’bout that. Whitcomb’s is the nearest.”

“We’ll try the nearest place, I think.”

“I guess we’d better tumble out now,” said the boy. “We’re gettin’ on to Haley’s Hill, and old Bill’s gettin’ kinder tuckered. Hold on! don’t jump out now. I’ll stop on the next thank-you-marm.”

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