Twenty-six hundred steep feet above sea level, fifteen hundred above their cosy camp upon the sidehill, with its exciting proximity to the Long Pasture, they had cut down wood with their Camp Fire axes, piled high the brush—for it takes much fuel to toast Mondamin—and brought water wherewith to wash him down, from a little lake of the clouds which could almost compete with the famous one of that name upon Mount Mansfield.
Mount Mansfield, giant of the Green Mountains, they had waved him goodnight before their bonfire put out the stars, so that lazy Orion’s nose was, for the most part, out of joint.
A teakettle sang its song upon a little red nest of its own, to the right of the main blaze, around which eighteen girls, each with a browning corn-ear upon the end of a stick, were preparing the jolly corn roast.
The first corn roast of the season—above the clouds!
The wind, now sibilant, soft, now swelling to a summit roar, sang through dark spruce and mountain ash of the heights—bringing out the red cheeks of the latter, the ripening berry clusters.
The mystery of night, young night, the girls had never before so felt it—so reveled in it.
Sparks played, firefly-like, among the trees. Potatoes hissed softly among red embers. Flames flickered upon great piles of husks, rosetting Mondamin’s bishop’s purple, his silken undercoats of pale green and cream, stripped off before roasting him.
Ever and anon, a toasting chorus to him rang out, led by Dorothy—the mountain top guild of glee, laughing girls, airing their own improvisations:
“Snap and crackle, blazing bonfire,
Pile the brush and pine logs high,