“We were stopping at the fine, new Profile House,” continued Mr. Percival, “Fred and I, with our fathers and mothers, as I said. Being of nearly the same age, we were always planning some sort of excursion together. One day we had begged to be allowed to ascend Mount Lafayette, a peak about twenty miles southwest of Mount Washington, and only second to the latter in point of interest. A guide-book which we had procured told of a fine house on the summit, and we would just stop there long enough to cool off after our walk, before coming down by the ‘well-worn bridle-path.’ We were sturdy little fellows, and though we had never yet accomplished such a feat as the ascent of a five thousand-foot mountain, felt quite equal to the task.”
“How old did you say you were, uncle?” asked Randolph.
“About fourteen, but large of our age. We started off at about two o’clock in the afternoon, with many injunctions to be back by tea-time, and on no account to linger by the way.
“It was in the highest of spirits that we strode away on the level road, up the valley, toward the peak that lay so softly brown against the blue sky just beyond. Before long we struck into the bridle-path, which was exceedingly muddy near the base, and became constantly more steep and slippery as we ascended. Boy-like, we were quite heedless of the lapse of time, and often stopped to gather birch bark, climb after squirrels’ nests, or take a bite of the sandwiches we had stuffed into our pockets at the last moment. The forest, I remember, was singularly silent, no breeze among the stiff tops of the hemlocks, no merry singing of birds; only now and then the muffled gurgle of a brook among the mossy stones beside the path, or the single, plaintive whistle of a thrush, far away on the mountain-side.
“When we had stopped for breath, about half-way up, a descending horseback-party passed us. We asked them about the house on the summit, but they only laughed, and said it had good walls and a high roof. This disturbed us a little, but we soon forgot our apprehensions, and pressed forward. Half a mile beyond this point, we came to that strange, nameless pool of water, seeming half cloud, half dream, hanging like a dew-drop on the slope of the mountain. As we stamped our feet on the moss which composed its banks, the whole surface of the ground, for rods away, trembled as if with an earthquake, and made us feel as if we were walking in a nightmare. It occurred to us that it would add to the glory of our exploit if we could catch some dream-fish out of this strange, unreal pond among the clouds; so we spent an hour or more in useless angling in its clear depths.
“Then Fred looked up at the sky, and uttered an exclamation. I followed his glance—and dropped my pole. The sun was almost resting on the edge of the mountains in the west, and it was plain that it would be dark in less than an hour.”
“And all those bears!” murmured Pet, gazing at the narrator with round eyes. “O, I should think you would have been scared!”
Mr. Percival smiled. “If I had been as old as I am now, I should have said ‘Fred, we’re caught this time by our own thoughtlessness. We can go down in half or quarter of the time it took us to climb up; and once on the main road in the valley, we shall be all right.’ But a boy of fourteen doesn’t reason in that way. We were tired and hungry. We thought of the welcome we should receive from the people on the summit, and of the good things they would doubtless have for supper.”
“‘Besides,’ said Fred, ‘we must be nearly up now. The trees don’t last much longer—they aren’t higher than our heads here. It’ll be all rocks pretty soon, and then we shall be right at the top, just like Mt. Washington.’
“So we started up again, with, we afterward confessed to each other, uncomfortable misgivings in our breasts. It was really my fault, though, for I was the older of the two, and ought to have known better.