limented for putting
another's life before her own--and didn't want to have anything more in
life to say to her!

Well! the Heavens fell upon the Pinnacle as Pem drew back--annihilated.

Snubbed for the first time in all her blue-sky life--and by a boy, too!

To be sure, indeed, the nickum, his glance darting past her to Una, had
gone by with a slight inclination of his bare head that was a stony bow.

To be sure, when one of the girls of his acquaintance questioned him
about the view from the Devil's Seat, there was a sort of creak in his
voice as he answered:

"It's--a--corker! You can see away off: far-rms, lakes, all the other
mountains--Mount Greylock, too, in the distance! But--but it's a
cat's-foot climb down--there!" breaking off breathlessly, as if feeling
were making a cat's-paw of him.

"Oh! you can really see Mount Greylock! As far away as that! Well! I'm
going to try-y it, too," ventured one of his girlish companions whose
age was fourteen. "Summer and winter, I've done a lot of climbing, up
here!"

"You try it! Any girl try sitting in the Devil's Chair! Why! there isn't
a girl living who could do it," crowed the gray-shouldered youth: and
now his tones were lordly, as if he were picking himself up after an
inner tumble.

"Hey! Is that so?" Pem--over-hearing--ground the words between her
teeth.

"Have you never heard of Camp Fire,
What a shame! What a shame!
_If_ you've never heard of Camp Fire,
You're to blame! You're to blame!
Then don't take a nap,
For we're on the map,
Ready to prove it with s-snap!"

She hissed the last word at the nickum's back, as he halted at some
distance with his companions.

"Una! I'm going to do it," she panted. "I'm going to slide down that
rock there, turn round and sit in the Chair--then draw myself up again,
as he did. I've got on sneakers. I know I can! I've done some breakneck
climbing with father--yes! and with my Camp Fire Group, too."

"I--I'll give you all my marshmallows that we brought with us to toast
at an open fire, if you do!... Yes! and one of my two little thistle
pins--pebble pins--that Andrew and his wife brought me from Scotland,
when they went home last year, _if you do_.... Wasn't he just
hor-rid? He didn't want to speak to us--to know us!"

Una's face flamed upon the bribe, and was so pretty lit by that fixed
star in the eye, that it must have been a zero-hearted nickum who could
turn his bac