. A few minutes
more and they had reached it--a veritable snow-bank in late July. The
Vigilantes, reenforced by Aunt Nan, challenged the boys to a snow-ball
fight, and they all dismounted for the fray. Then came dinner of Hannah's
sandwiches, and bacon and eggs cooked over a little friendship fire beyond
the snow.

An hour later they reached the mountain-top, and lo! it was spring again.
The ground was covered with early spring flowers--shooting-stars and
spring beauties and bearded-tongues. In the sheltered nooks they found
dog-toothed violets, and more forget-me-nots--both pink and blue.

It was here that the inexperienced New Englanders longed to camp. They
wanted to wake in the morning, they said, and look far across the blue
distances, over the tops of the highest trees, to the mountains beyond,
like Moses gazing into the Promised Land. But they willingly consented to
ride down on the other side to a more sheltered spot and camp by a tiny
mountain lake, when Malcolm, aided by Donald and Virginia, explained that
a snow-storm was not an unlikely occurrence away up there--even in July!

It was strange to sit around the big camp-fire that night after
supper--all alone in a mountain wilderness; strange to rehearse school
incidents and to listen to Malcolm's stories of hunting for elk and
antelope in that very spot; strangest of all to go to sleep on pine boughs
and blankets which the boys had spread in their tents. The weird, lonesome
cry of the coyotes startled more than one sleeping Vigilante that night,
and Vivian nestled closer beneath Aunt Nan's protecting arm. It was not
until the next morning when they started for home that they knew of the
bear, who, smelling the ham and bacon, had wandered into camp, only to be
repulsed by Malcolm and an extra log on the fire.

In that strange, just-before-dawn stillness Virginia awoke to miss
Priscilla from her side. She moved the tent flap, and looked out.
Priscilla stood by the entrance, her eyes raised to the distant
mountains--great shadows beneath a star-strewn sky. She was learning the
old, old secrets of those mountains at night.

"I couldn't help it, Virginia," she whispered, as she crept back a few
moments later. "I've wanted so to see what it was like at night, and now I
know. It's bigger than ever! I don't believe that any one could look at
the mountains and the stars and ever be doubtful about--God
and--and--things like that, do you?"

*