By this time Will's hunger was too much for his archery enthusiasm, and he began to grumble.
"Say, boys, isn't it about time to get to the Glen, and make our camp? I'm getting hungry. It's hard work drawing this bow of mine, and my arms are tired."
"Yes, let's go to the Glen," said their captain, Foster; and half an hour's silent tramping in the underbrush and up the rising ground—for they were now pretty tired—brought them to the spot known as the Glen.
The Glen was a lovely place. A sparkling spring, rising at the base of a giant hemlock at the head of a long deep gully, had in the course of ages filled in the hollow, till a broad level floor was made, surrounded by close-growing hemlocks, pines, and spruces, and carpeted with fine turf and pine needles. The water from the spring, flowing in a shallow brook through the middle of this floor, lost itself in the dark recesses of the gully further down. At the very top of the great hemlock by the spring was a rude eyrie, built by the boys, called the Crow's Nest, and from its swaying, breezy height they had a magnificent view of the country for miles around. Here, rocking gently and safely, seventy-five feet above the spring, they picked out their homes, the pretty white villages nestling among the forest masses of green, and the slender streams glistening among the cultivated fields and neat mowings.
Near the spring was a rude hut that Stuart and his mates had built a few years before. Taking possession of this, they took off their haversacks, hung their bows and quivers about on projecting limbs, gathered dry leaves and sticks, and soon had a fire started in a rude stone fireplace.
"Well, my merry bowmen, how do the twanging bow-string and the hissing arrow suit the greenwood?" asked Stuart, who came up as they lay picturesquely about, waiting for a bed of coals.
"Oh, it is splendid. Isn't it, boys?" answered Will, the oldest of the young archers. "Just see how pretty the bows and quivers look, hanging among the green branches. How nice this all is! But what name shall we give our club?"
"Woodland Archers," suggested Ned.
"Mohawk Foresters," added Henry. "We want our river in the name, and the Mohawks were great warriors."
"Let's call it the Mohawk Bowmen," continued Ned. "That's just the thing." And all agreed to it, and so Mohawk Bowmen was decided upon as the club name.