GOING INTO A HOT PLACE.
"Where have you started for, anyway?" inquired the conductor, after a little pause.
Joe replied that they had set out from Mount Airy to run across the State, and that when they reached the farther end of their route they would be about three hundred miles from home.
"I suppose your object is to have fun and see the country, isn't it?" said the conductor. "Now of course I don't know anything about wheeling, but I should say that you could not have selected a worse route. You'll see the wildest bit of country there is, but how much fun you'll have I don't know. After you leave Dorchester you'll get into the mountains, and then your road will be all up-hill."
"But the ascent is so gradual that we can easily accomplish it," said Roy. "Our road-book tells us it is so very gradual that we will hardly know we are going up. We understand that there is plenty of sport in the way of hunting and trout fishing in the neighborhood of Glen's Falls, and we intend to take our first rest there, if we can find any one who is willing to board us for a few days."
"And if we can't do that, we shall camp out," added Joe. "We came prepared to do it."
"I don't know much about hunting and fishing either," said the conductor. "All I do know is railroading; but some of my friends used to spend a month or so about the Glen every year, and always came back with the report that they had had the best kind of a time. But I notice they don't go there any more."
"What's the reason they don't?"
"Doesn't your guide-book warn you that there are some fellows up that way you had better keep clear of?" asked the conductor in reply.