Harper's Young People, August 2, 1881 / An Illustrated Weekly

by Various

"We will start by the stage just after dinner, and ride a little way, and then get down," Jack told his sister; and Alice at once hurried off to finish their packing, and to say good-by to her friends.

They meant to go ten or twelve miles that afternoon. Jack was sure he remembered the road perfectly, and knew where they could find lodgings for the night. Some one found out that they were going afoot, and said that it was a capital day for it; but the long climb up the mountain the day before seemed to have tired almost everybody but themselves, and no one offered to accompany them except two or three of their cronies, who strolled along with them for half a mile or so.

Our friends were in the highest spirits, and started off at last side by side without a fear, keeping step and looking around at each other every few minutes to smile and say what fun it was. Jack had a traveller's bag slung over his shoulders with a strap, and Alice carried a little lunch-box and her light jacket, and they both had the sticks which they had carried on all their tramps about the mountains. They felt like people who were journeying in earnest, and were not merely out for a stroll.

They were both capital walkers; they had had good practice during the last few weeks at the Glen, and they went gayly down the road for the first few miles without taking much thought of anything but the mere pleasure of walking. There had been a good many rains, and the streams were full, and the foliage was as fresh and green as if it were the first of June. The mountains stood up grand and tall, and there was not a cloud to be seen.

"It is even clearer than yesterday," said Alice. "I am sorry we are not just coming to the mountains instead of just going away. Jack! there must be trout in that brook."

"I was just thinking of that," said the boy. "Here is a line in my pocket; I mean to cut a little pole and rig it, and go up the hill a little way. You could be resting."

But Alice disdained the idea of being tired, and sat down to wait in a most comfortable place under a pine-tree. "I wish there was another line," she said. "I put all my tackle in my trunk before we thought of letting mamma go on without us."

Jack was soon ready, and pushed in through the bushes, and in the silence that everything kept but the brook, his sister could hear him for a few minutes as he went on from point to point, sometimes snapping the dead branches that he stepped upon. It was growing warmer, and she was, after all, not sorry to sit still for a little while. She called to Jack once or twice to be sure he had not gone too far away, and he whistled in answer, softly, as if there might be some chance of a trout, and at last he did not answer at all.

Alice looked at the mountains, and pulled an envelope out of her pocket and began to make a little sketch of a strange old tree the other side of the road, and she did not hurry about it; so after she had finished it she said to herself that Jack had been gone long enough. There was no possible danger of his losing his way, but it was long past the middle of the afternoon already, and they must go on. So she whistled again and again the odd little call with which Jack was very familiar, but he did not answer. He had evidently gone a good way up from the road; and she shouted, but he did not shout to her, and she said to herself that it was very wrong of him, and that there was no more fishing to be done on that journey out of sight of the road. She grew very worried at last, and annoyed as well; the mosquitoes had grown troublesome, and she did not like staying there alone for so long; and the thought seized her that her brother must have fallen over the rocks and hurt himself badly, for it was over an hour since he had gone away.