Peace was making its way into each heart, when the purr of an automobile was heard, and as Nathalie hurried to the window, she saw Mr. Banker whirling under the porte-cochère. As the boys, paroled on their honor, a little later hung around the car, discussing its many merits, they were duly presented to the newcomer. That gentleman evidently liked small boys, for he immediately made arrangements to call for them some day, and take them to Littleton for an all-day good time.
The following afternoon Nathalie, holding Sheila by the hand, with Jean by her side, and the two boys in front of her, started to show them the mountains. At the post-office at Sugar Hill village Jean, who had been delegated to act as postman the coming week, was duly initiated into the business of opening the mail-box, an office he accepted with a sudden lighting of his dazed eyes, which Nathalie began to fancy were already losing some of their fear-haunted expression.
A short visit was paid to the Sweet-Pea ladies, where they were treated to some maple sugar, Mona very earnest in her endeavors to show sympathy for the little refugee, and her admiration for Sheila. As they hurried away, a bunch of sweet peas was seen on each little breast, pinned there by that gentle lady.
A walk on the long, curving board-walk up the hill, with a rest on one of the benches under the maples, to Hotel Look-off, now followed. The three boys were anxious to start that very minute to climb Iron Mountain, but were soon persuaded that it was too warm a day for a mountain hike. From the long veranda of the hotel they were lured to admiration of the hilly, wide-spreading green sward, and the magnificent views of the mountains, as they rose and fell, receded and advanced, with their jutting pinnacles of rock, gloomed with the green of mountain forest.
After slacking their thirst at the little spring-house in the grove, they sauntered down the board-walk to the Sunset Hill House, and as they interestedly watched the golfers in their bright-colored coats on the velvety green links, Danny proudly informed them that he knew how to caddy. But their enthusiasm grew tense when they stood on the little observation tower in front of the hotel, and Nathalie pointed out the Presidential Range, with Mount Washington towering six thousand feet up among the clouds.
She then showed them the Franconia Range, explaining that the great mountains were divided into clefts, or notches, from which flowed four long rivers and many smaller ones, several of them being named after the Indians, who, in the early times, lived on the mountain passes.
With the help of the chart they soon learned that Lafayette was the highest peak of this smaller range, and that Pemigewasset, seemingly the nearest peak to the hotel, had been named after a great Indian chieftain. The adjoining peaks, as the Kinsman and the Three Graces, proved of interest; also Cannon, or Profile Mountain, when the young girl explained that it not only had a stone, shaped like a cannon, on its top, but that from one of its sides a great stone face was to be seen.
Nathalie now told her young listeners how the mountains were first seen, over four hundred and fifty years ago, a cluster of snowy peaks, by John Cabot, from the deck of his ship when sailing along the New England coast. They were called Waumbekket-meyna, the White Hills, and sometimes “The mountains with the snowy foreheads,” by the Indians.
The first white man to ascend these heights, she related, was an Irishman named Field, who, two hundred years after they had been seen by Cabot, with a few white companions, climbed to the topmost crag of the highest peak. “Field found a number of shiny crystals which he thought were costly gems,” laughed the girl merrily, “but, alas, they proved to be only beautiful white stones, but, on account of this occurrence, the mountains came to be called Crystal Hills.
“The Indian guides who had accompanied Field part way up the mountains,” continued Nathalie, “refused to go any farther, for fear that the Great Spirit, who they believed lived in a magnificent palace on the highest peak, would destroy them if they ventured too near him. They were so surprised to see Field return in safety a few hours later that they decided he was a god, for during his absence a great storm had arisen, which they believed had been sent by the Indian Manitou to kill him. The redmen not only believed that the Great Spirit sent forth the frost and snow, as well as the rain and fire,—the lightning—but declared that the thunder was his voice.”