"Reckon so," said Dave, and telling Worth to wait, the two went forward to investigate.
Paul Jones meanwhile had been tracing the deep, narrow bed of the smaller stream, filled with the idea that its source must be in some spring. And presently he came running back shouting at the top of his voice—"Yelling like a wooden Indian," Billy said—"Say! oh, say! Here's the hunky-doriest place you ever dreamed about! Here's the one spot in all your natural life, for a fact!"
The rapturous enthusiasm of Jones' tones caused Worth to jump down from the car and hurry toward him. Dave and Phil, now some distance forward, also hastened back, and together the quartette climbed the rise of ground toward the woods. What they found fully accounted for Paul's delighted manner.
Here on a shelving plateau of conglomerate rock, overgrown with moss and patches of velvety grass, was a level space several hundred feet in length and perhaps fifty feet from the abrupt descent at its front to the rough, irregular wall of natural stonework, rising as high as the tops of the trees, at the back.
From a wide but shallow cave, in the wall at the rear, there trickled a beautifully clear and cool spring. For a time the water rested in a natural basin in the rocks, then overflowed through a tiny channel of its own making. Deeper and wider this channel grew and so became the water course, previously described, leading to the creek.
Many small ash, beech and chestnut trees somehow found foothold in the earthy crevices of the rocks, but of underbrush, fallen timber or similar obstructions the place was quite clear. Being much higher than the valley before it, the little plateau caught the last rays of the sinking sun most charmingly as it also received the welcome visits of the wandering breezes that passed quite over the lower land.
Of firewood, that most necessary factor in the making of a camp, there was plenty both below and above the broad shelf. Water of the purest quality the spring afforded in abundance. For bathing, fishing or such other accommodations as a good-sized stream could afford, the creek was but a few hundred feet away.
"Great!" exclaimed Mr. William Worth approvingly. "Simply carniverous!"
By which expression, it will be understood, he meant that the spot under inspection was extremely satisfactory, rather than exactly what he called it.
"Never get the car up here!" declared MacLester, looking about doubtfully. "Never get the car up here in the world!"