"More mountains towering before us! When shall we have done with them?" said the major, in a lugubrious tone. "How high is this Haystack you speak of?"
"But seven hundred feet less than Mount Washington," answered Edgar.
"O dear!" groaned the major. "Heaven save me from attempting the ascension! Can we do nothing better than tear our clothes and bruise our shins among brushwood and bridle-paths; clambering up to the sky just to stare about us a few moments, and then tumbling down headlong, as it were, to the valleys again?"
"Well," said Edgar, "if the Great Haystack intimidates you, suppose we ride up through the Notch, and visit the 'Old Man.'"
"What old man?" asked the major.
"The Old Man of the Mountain!"
"I should have no objection to calling on the old fellow," returned Major Howard, "if he did not live on a mountain; but I cannot think of climbing up any more of these prodigious steeps,—even to see a king in his regal palace."
A burst of laughter followed the major's misapprehension of the object which Lindenwood had proposed to visit.
"It is not a man of flesh and blood we are to see, father," said Florence, as soon as she could command her voice sufficiently to speak, "but a granite profile, standing out from a peak of solid rock, exactly resembling the features of a man's face; whence its name, 'Old Man of the Mountain.'"
"Ay, that's all, then!" said the major, referring to his guidebook. "I shall be very glad of the privilege of standing on the ground for once and looking up at an object; for I confess it afflicts my kindly-affectioned nature to be forever looking down upon this goodly earth, as if in disdainful contempt of its manifold beauties. So, to-morrow, ladies and gentlemen," added he, rising, "we are to pay our respects to this 'Old Man.' I hear music below. You young people would like to join the merry groups, I suppose. I'm going down to the office to enjoy a cigar, and then retire, for my old bones are sadly racked with the jaunts of to-day. Good-night to you all." Thus saying, he walked away.