By telegraphic arrangement, behind the station waited a touring car driven by a trooper of State Constabulary, who, with his comrade, saluted smartly as Cleves and Tressa came up.
There was a brief, low-voiced conversation. Their camping outfit was stowed aboard, Tressa sprang into the tonneau followed by Cleves, and the car started swiftly up the inclined roadway, turned to the right across the railroad bridge, across the trolley tracks, and straight on up the steep hill paved with blocks of granite.
On the level road which traversed the ridge at last they speeded up, whizzed past the great hedged farm where racing horses are bred, rushing through the afternoon sunshine through the old-time Scotch settlements which once were outposts of the old New York frontier.
Nine miles out the macadam road ended. They veered to the left over a dirt road, through two hamlets; then turned to the right.
The landscape became rougher. To their left lay the long, low Maxon hills; behind them the Mayfield range stretched northward into the open jaws of the Adirondacks.
All around them were woods, now. Once a Gate House appeared ahead; and beyond it they crossed four bridges over a foaming, tumbling creek where Cleves caught glimpses of shadowy forms in amber-tinted pools—big yellow trout that sank unhurriedly out of sight among huge submerged boulders wet with spray.
The State trooper beside the chauffeur turned to Cleves, his purple tie whipping in the wind.
“Yonder is Glenwild, sir,” he said.
It was a single house on the flank of a heavily forested hill. Deep below to the left the creek leaped two cataracts and went flashing out through a belt of cleared territory ablaze with late sunshine.
The car swung into the farm-yard, past the barn on the right, and continued on up a very rough trail.