Away to the north loomed the rounded outline of a taller mountain, the Dome; and in the dim distance, before the evening shadows herded on the trail—the day’s long trail—there had been mighty glimpses of giant Mount Mansfield and Camel’s Hump.
“The old farmer whom we met, back there, said that this valley was where two brooks had ‘gouged out a hollow’, eaten the heart out of a hill,” remarked Terry Ross, Assistant Guardian, her brown eyes blinking at the blaze; “that we had ‘civ’lization’, at a ‘far-come’, on either side of us—nothing between.”
“Yes! he cheerfully told us that, here, we were ‘two miles an’ a half beyond God bless you’!”? came with a sidelong wink from Pemrose, who was using her vigorous young lungs as bellows. “Humph! He’s beyond the pale himself; his farm’s right here in Hidden Valley—not quarter of a mile away. If it should come on a reckless downpour, we may have to storm his old barn, before morning.”
“We must wait till he’s asleep then—otherwise he’d turn us out; he was the crankiest mountaineer we’ve run across yet; you—you could hear him ‘cur-murring’ a mile off.” Una knelt, stretching her hands to the fire that valiantly defied the tail end of a shower.
“Yes, he said this country was only ‘fit for b’ars’, that they ought to chase all the folks out of it,” pouted Dorothy; “then, I suppose, he’d be quite at home.”
“He seemed awf’ly peeved over something, out of luck, somehow. But don’t you remember he did drawl out—” Pemrose wrinkled up a moist little nose, with a smut on the end of it, to imitate the high-pitched twang of the old Green Mountaineer—“he did drawl out, looking us over: ‘Wal! I reckon you birds can stand more’n most city folks!’ Bah! this ‘bird’ can’t stand another thing until she’s been fed—with crumbs. Has any one filled the kettle?”
“Yes.” Dorothy produced it. “We filled it at the clearest of the two brooks, the one with the stony bed, which that peeved old farmer said made the noise of the devil’s pans and kettles—the devil at his dish-washing.”
“But what a ‘solemncholy’ old demon he must be, judging by the night,” laughed Terry Ross.
For now, indeed, the night was growing heavy-hearted—even to bitterness.
The moon, as she rose, was in mourning. Rain stole, sighing, through Hidden Valley. Thunder hummed-and-hawed, afar.