“Cheer up, you’ll get that all right,” the man laughed.
They all sat for a while discussing the day’s adventure, and planning for the next day, if it was clear. The five men were going down over the Davis Path, and as that path leads along Boott Spur, the Scouts decided to go with them, leaving them at the end of the spur, the Scouts to descend for the night into Tuckerman’s Ravine, while the others kept on southwest, over the Giant’s Stairs, to the lower end of Crawford Notch.
“But we want to visit the Lakes of the Clouds first,” said the Scout Master. “We scarcely got a peep at ’em to-day.”
“Suits us,” said the man called Tom. “We’ll have time, if we start early. I’d like to see the Alpine garden myself.”
“And now for taps,” cried the bugler.
He and Lou got up, and went out-of-doors. The rest followed, but the first pair slipped away quickly into the cloud, going down the carriage road till the lamp of the coach house was invisible.
The universe was deathly still save for the continual moaning of the wind. There was nothing at all visible, either stars above, or valley lamps below—nothing but a damp, chilly white darkness. Lou was silent, awed. The man set his bugle to his lips, and blew—blew the sweet, sad, solemn notes of taps.
As they rose above the moaning of the wind and seemed to float off into space, Lou’s heart tingled in his breast. As the last note died sweetly away, there were tears in his eyes—he couldn’t say why. But something about taps always made him sad, and now, in this strange setting up in the clouds, the tears actually came. The man saw, and laid a hand in silence on his shoulder.
“You understand,” he said, presently, as they moved back up the road, and that was all he said.
Back in the coach house, the proprietor showed them all the available cots up-stairs. There were two shy, so Art and Peanut insisted on sleeping down-stairs by the stove. They wabbed up an extra blanket or two for a bed, made their sweaters into pillows, and almost before the lamp was blown out, they were as fast asleep as if they had been lying on feathers.