iden in distress."

"Two maidens," I said.
"All right," he laughed; "the more the merrier."

"And one of those fellows said I was a kid," I told him. "Anyway, if I took
a girl out, I'd know how to bring her back, that's one thing. Wait till I
see that fellow."

Harry just laughed and said he wouldn't miss it for anything. So we took
two lanterns and started off along the road that ran north, and pretty soon
we hit into the main road out of Haverstraw and came to the big white house
with the windmill. Pretty soon we hit into the cow path that led up through
the woods. It wasn't just like the fellow said, because it fizzled out in a
pasture. Anyway, across the pasture were thicker woods and we picked up the
mountain trail there. If he had told us that it started right near a big
stone, it would have saved us a lot of hunting around with our lanterns.
That's just the way it is with big fellows; they think they're so smart
that they don't know anything. Gee whiz, you didn't need a microscope to
see that rock, but he never even mentioned it over the 'phone.

One thing, who ever named that mountain Eagle's Nest ought to apologize to
the first eagle he meets. It would have been a crazy eagle that would build
a nest like that. As nearly as I could make out it was a lot of mountains
all jumbled into one. Harry said it was a kind of a bouquet of mountains.

The trail led up through a pine forest and first it was easy following it.
Then It went down into a hollow and got mixed up with a lot of rocks. I
guess that must have been one of the rooms of the eagle's nest. Anyway, we
couldn't follow it through there so we took a chance and picked it up on
the other side.

That's where the climbing began. Oh boy, that was some tangle-all
underbrush and scrub oak. _Good night_, I don't know how those girls ever
got through there. Pretty soon I stopped and began sniffing.

"Do you know what it reminds me of?" I said.

"It reminds me of raking up the leaves at home."

"It smells like a rake," Hunt Manners said, just joking.

"Not but I mean burning autumn leaves," I said; "you know how it smells in
Bridgeboro in the autumn. Then you know it's getting cold and Thanksgiving
and Christmas are coming. Anyway, you can laugh, but that smell always
reminds me of Thanksgiving."

Harry just sniffed, but didn't say anything, and we started up again. There
were lots of big hubbles, kind of valleys in the mountain, and most of them
were rocky