Till the flames wax bolder—bolder,
Scaring stars out of the sky!
Roasted he was royally and absorbed—devoured—too, with various accompaniments, while the flames sank to a flicker—and Orion came into his own again, with a belt of dark clouds around him.
The wind muttered strangely now; muttered a “fore-go”, if girlish ears had been attuned to its meaning.
Faces, black and buttery—not beautiful, but very happy—gathered round a core of red, soon to be extinguished, when the descent of the mountain should begin.
“It’s too bad that we didn’t bring ponchos and sleeping bags—spend the night up here on the mountain top,” said Dorothy. “We’d have been comfy enough in that open camp, over there—although it has no front wall, only two gray wings, with a gap in the middle.”
“How many of those camps you do run across among the Green Mountains,” said Pemrose, “nearly all left generously open for the ‘next fellow,’” laughingly; “some quite snug, with gray bunks and doors—others with no face, like that!”
“And haven’t we sampled the hard knocks,—hard bunks—too, by sleeping in them?” murmured Madeline. “Well—hard or soft—it has been a great old time. A wonderful summer! And now it’s—nearly—over.”
“Some queer things have happened, too,” half-whispered Naomi.
“Nothing very exciting since the night somebody played Pied Piper upon the mountain—and coaxed Una almost over the precipice-edge! I wonder who....” Lura leaned forward to stir the fire—her murmur breathlessly low.