“Now, how are you going to reach your camp on Millinokett Lake?” asked Dr. Phil, when the buzz had subsided. “That’s the next question.”
“We intend to tramp the entire distance by easy stages, and get there about the middle of October,” answered young Garst for himself and his comrades. “Uncle Eb will go along with us as guide; and he’ll supply a tent, so that we can rest for two or three nights at a time if we choose.”
“Hum!” said the doctor doubtfully, laying his hand on Dol’s shoulder. “This youngster oughtn’t to do much tramping for a few days, Cyrus. That deer-road did up his feet pretty badly. I’ll be travelling in your direction myself the day after to-morrow. I want to visit a farm-settlement within a dozen miles of the lake, where the farmer has a sickly child, the only treasure in his log shanty. The mite frets if Doc doesn’t come to see her once in a while.
“Therefore, I propose that we join forces, and press forward together. I guess I’ll keep my nephews out here for a week longer, and take the responsibility of their missing that time at school. Now that they have fallen in with your friends, it would be a shame to separate Young England and Young America without giving them a chance to get friendly.”
Here Dr. Phil beamed upon the five boys, who, after one night in the forest, sleeping in a light-hearted row on the evergreen boughs, with their feet to the fire, had reached a brotherly intimacy which years of city life might not have bred.
“I further propose,” he went on, “that we hire a roomy wagon and a pair of strong horses from a settler who has a clearing about two miles from here. There is an old logging-road which runs through the woods towards the point for which we’re heading. We could follow that for the first half of our journey. It isn’t a turnpike, you know. In fact, it’s only a broad track where the underbrush has been cleared away, and the trees cut down, with strips of corduroy road sandwiched in. But the lumbermen still haul supplies over it to their camps, and I propose that we follow their example. We can pile our tent, camp duffle [stores], and all our packs into the wagon, together with the hero of the deer-road,”—winking at Dol,—“and the rest of us can take turns in riding. It will be a big lark for these youngsters to travel over a corduroy road. A very bracing ride they’ll have in more senses than one; but they can spin plenty of yarns about it when they get home.”
The “youngsters,” one and all, signified their approval of the suggestion. Cyrus, who, as a college man, was above this category, was pleased to acquiesce too.
“When can we get the wagon, Doctor?” asked Neal, burning to press onward.
“Oh! the day after to-morrow, I guess. And now, lads!” Dr. Phil’s voice was serious, but exultant, “we’re a thoroughly happy set of fellows, in accord with each other and our surroundings. We feel our brains clear, our gladness springing up, and our lungs swelling to double their size with the whiffs which reach us from those sky-piercing pines yonder. So we will remember that ‘the wide earth is our Father’s temple.’ Over there in the woods we will worship him, while millions of forest creatures about us, flying, bounding, or building, in obedience to his laws, simply worship too.”
A music soft, deep, sighing, like the murmur of an organ under the fingers of a master musician, rolled through the pine-tops as the band of campers, guides included, followed Doc into the forest. They passed the clumps of slender trees near the camp, and reached a dimly-lit green aisle.