Having so spoken, she returned to her labors and was presently hanging on the line a long row of deep pink clothing, headed by the red silk handkerchief, the iniquitous author of the wicked deed.
In the meantime the motorists had proceeded joyfully on their way. They sang and joked and made so merry that Dr. Hume felt that he had gone back fifteen years in his busy life and was a boy himself. The road as indicated on the map in the road book was cut through forests of primeval growth. Sometimes it descended into the valley past villages and farm houses. Once it took them through a splendid tract of land dedicated with its club house to St. Hubert, patron saint of the hunt. At last it began by degrees to climb upward, and with a sudden turn around the mountain side, they came into view of an exquisite little lake, reflecting in its mirrored depths the peaks of the high mountains encircling it. Hundreds of silver birches, slender and elegant, fringed its edges, gleaming white against a background of impenetrable green.
At one corner of the lake were a small boathouse and restaurant, where customers are perpetually served with tea and maple cake. Long ago they had eaten lunch and were quite ready for more refreshments. Then everybody but Miss Campbell took a dip in the lake. The hours sped past and the sun was well on its downward grade before they realized it was time to return.
In the meantime, Billie, always eager to find out about new roads and new trails, had been questioning one of the guides at the boathouse.
“He says there’s a walk called the ‘river trail’ only two miles long that we could take, and meet the ‘Comet’ at a bridge at the end. Don’t you think some of us could take it, Dr. Hume? It’s right through the most wonderful pine forests,—one of the most beautiful walks in the Adirondacks, he says.”
“But who will run the motor car?” asked the doctor, beetling his shaggy eyebrows.
“I will,” Ben volunteered, and it was accordingly arranged that Dr. Hume and Percy should conduct the girls along the river trail while Miss Campbell and Ben proceeded by the road in the car.
It was all very simple. Miss Campbell was to take a nap while Ben looked after the “Comet’s” needs and in the course of half an hour, or at their leisure, they were to take the road. In the meantime, the others, with good walking, would have ample time to make the two miles through the forest. They bade each other a casual farewell since they were to meet again so soon, and led by the doctor, plunged into the forest.
The ground had been cleared of undergrowth, so that looking up the side of the mountain, at the foot of which gurgled a little river, one could see a vast multitude of tall straight pine trees and occasionally the flash of a silver birch. Rank on rank they stood in infinite perspective; and sometimes an aged beech tree generalled their march and sometimes a magnificent oak spread out his venerable arms with a gesture of command. But the rank and file were pines; gray grenadiers, still upright with the years; young stripling pines, eager to be on the march. And always they seemed to be going the same way over the mountains to the frontiers of the world, and always through their branches came the murmur of their martial song.
Nowhere had Billie seen so impressive, so magnificent a forest. She thought of the cryptomerias in Japan, but they were more like the gigantic pillars of a cathedral, while these hurrying hordes of pines and birches were like human beings. They suggested romances: lovers in the forests; knights in armor; wicked enchantresses.