“Oh! we can find it for ourselves–hurrah!” shouted Una, almost squinting with anticipation. “I’ve never stood upon a real mountain wishing-stone before. Who–who knows what may come of it?”
In her young blood, as in Andrew’s, was the extravagant excitement of the whole experiment,–this first step in the ladder of demonstration which was by and by to reach the moon–lending to all an unearthly touch.
“The–the Man Killer trail! Why! that’s one place where we haven’t searched–yet!” A moping Pemrose suddenly awoke.
To her, who had grown up amid the mathematical realities of an inventor’s laboratory, who had “plugged” so hard at her elementary physics that she might be able to grasp the first principles of her father’s work, some day–some day to work with him,–to her, the little girl-mechanic, a wishing stone was no golden magnet.
But the very fact that there was one spot, not so far from the summit, either–wildest spot on the mountain though it be–still unexplored, was enough to draw her restless feet anywhere, against any deadlock of difficulty.
“Ha! The Man Killer trail!” she whooped again. “Oh-h! we could easily find it; we saw a sign directing to it, as we came up the mountain.”
“It’s na a trail; it’s just a hotch-potch o’ rocks–some sharp as stickit teeth!” groaned Andrew, who saw his own doom fixed, in vain protesting.
He felt rather like a man who had been left behind to hold a wolf by the ears when, in the teeth of every remonstrance he could offer, he found himself, a little later, starting out in the rear of two adventurous girls, in quest of that third slab of a wishing stone–and the breath-racking Man Killer trail.
But those girls were, to some degree, seasoned climbers, both,–sure-footed as venturesome!
Through the dim limelight of fringing pine woods, across oozing mud-beds, soft from spring rains and freshets, over a babbling brook spanned by an elastic bridge formed of the interlacing roots of giant trees–where Una found much delight in bouncing up and down in anticipation of the magic stone–they stubbornly held their way, and came at last to the chaos of rocks crowding a steep gorge which marked the head of the lonely Killer trail.