"Are you going to be busy this afternoon?" I asked him.
"No, I reckon not."
"Suppose you come and go up to the fort with me?"
"What fort?"
"Fort Putnam. I have never been there yet."
"There is nothing on earth to go there for," said Preston, shrugging his shoulders. "Just broil yourself in the sun, and get nothing for it. It's an awful pull uphill; rough, and all that; and nothing at the top but an old stone wall."
"But there is the view!" I said.
"You have got it down here—just as good. Just climb up the hotel stairs fifty times without stopping, and then look out of the thing at the top—and you have been to Fort Putnam."
"Why, I want you to go to the top of Crow's Nest," I said.