It had been quite nippy when they had started out, but as the sun climbed higher the chill gave way to a genial warmth and the frozen surface of the road began to thaw, making the walking rather slippery in places. A beech grove was a mass of gold, across a field to the left, and further inland the edge of the forest showed all shades of vermillion and scarlet and russet yellow and green. On the river side of the hill a rocky pasture had grown up in young oaks, and these supplied a tone of brown-pink, as Matty, who dabbled in paints, called it, that quite drove that young lady to despair.
“Isn’t it wonderful, May?” she exclaimed. “Did you ever see such a color? I—I wouldn’t know how to get it at all.”
“I’ll pick a few leaves for you,” volunteered Tad, “and you can take them home with you.” But the leaves on nearer acquaintance quite failed to produce the effect of the trees at a distance, and Matty discarded them and went on with many backward glances, murmuring to herself, totally absorbed in the problem. At their left the Hudson was in sight much of the way, winding and twisting, at times broadening out into small inland seas across which ridiculous ferry boats plodded. Now and then a white sail broke the intense blue of the surface and once a river steamer passed down, brave in white and gold. There were several raids on wayside orchards, and Tad, who constituted himself general sampler for the expedition, was biting into and discarding apples all the way along. Unfortunately, by the time he had tasted an apple and found it satisfactory the tree it had come from had been left several hundred yards behind them. But Tad, ever hopeful, set his eyes on the next orchard and tried again. Except that he worked up a slight stomach ache eventually, their raids were rather unproductive. May, who looked on trespassing as a crime, held her eyes askance when the others wandered from the road, and only accepted the fruits of transgression under protest. She appeared to enjoy what fell to her share, however as well as any of them.
It was well into the middle of the forenoon when they finally tramped over a crest of the road and saw Finger Rock rising into the air a quarter of a mile ahead. A lane, which ran from the main road along the back of a farmyard, wound uphill to a wooded plateau and from the summit of the latter Finger Rock stood up for all the world like the sore thumb of Tad’s description. It looked from that distance like one huge lump of rusty pink granite set on end, but Kitty explained that it was in reality a number of ledges heaped up together, and rattled on quite knowingly about glaciers and moraines. The lower part of the Rock was scantily clothed with scrub trees, bushes and grass, but the upper half of it was bare of all vegetation save moss and lichen.
“How big is it on top?” asked Rodney as they turned into the lane to the excited barking of a dog in the farmer’s yard.
“About twenty feet across,” answered Kitty. “It’s uneven though; lots of loose rock up there.”
“We couldn’t get up, could we?”
Kitty shrugged. “You and I could; Tad, maybe; the girls couldn’t.”
“I should think not!” said Matty. “I wouldn’t try it for anything. Would you, May?”
May replied vehemently that she certainly would not. Tad observed Kitty indignantly.