“Say, it’s worse than a bear hunt,” Dumplin’ groaned.
“You’ll think it is, by the time we get back to camp tomorrow night,” the doctor smiled. “I have a hunch that even Bennie is going to get enough exercise, for once.”
“Ho,” said Bennie, “Uncle Billy’s trying to scare us! Can I take Jeff along, Uncle, up his own mountain?”
“It might be a good way to get rid of him,” the doctor answered. “But if you don’t want to get rid of him, I advise you to tie him up in camp.”
“I wonder if Uncle Billy is trying to scare us?” Bennie whispered to Spider as they got ready for bed. “Don’t seem as if the old mountain was so bad as all that.”
Spider was very sober. “I had a good look at it through the glasses yesterday,” he replied. “I don’t mind saying right now that it’s got me scared. Remember those pictures in the book at home?”
“You mean the old Spitzes, and things? Sure!”
“Well, we’re going to get some of that stuff ourselves tomorrow.”
“Hooray!” said Bennie. “The real thing beats a book.”
But he began to think of the pictures as he was going to sleep, pictures of men clinging to precipices with awful depths below them, and in his dreams he was falling, falling, falling——