ht, so we threw more wood on our fire,
put on our jackets, and curled down in the warm sand. Several of us
pretended to doze, but I fancy we were really thinking about Tip's Bluff
and the extinct people. Over in the wood the ring doves were calling
mournfully to one another, and once we heard a dog bark, far away.
"Somebody getting into old Tommy's melon patch," Fritz murmured
sleepily, but nobody answered him. By and by Percy spoke out of the
shadows.

"Say, Tip, when you go down there will you take me with you?"

"Maybe."

"Suppose one of us beats you down there, Tip?"

"Whoever gets to the Bluff first has got to promise to tell the rest of
us exactly what he finds," remarked one of the Hassler boys, and to this
we all readily assented.

Somewhat reassured, I dropped off to sleep. I must have dreamed about a
race for the Bluff, for I awoke in a kind of fear that other people were
getting ahead of me and that I was losing my chance. I sat up in my
damp clothes and looked at the other boys, who lay tumbled in uneasy
attitudes about the dead fire. It was still dark, but the sky was blue
with the last wonderful azure of night. The stars glistened like crystal
globes, and trembled as if they shone through a depth of clear water.
Even as I watched, they began to pale and the sky brightened. Day came
suddenly, almost instantaneously. I turned for another look at the blue
night, and it was gone. Everywhere the birds began to call, and all
manner of little insects began to chirp and hop about in the willows.
A breeze sprang up from the west and brought the heavy smell of ripened
corn. The boys rolled over and shook themselves. We stripped and plunged
into the river just as the sun came up over the windy bluffs.

When I came home to Sandtown at Christmas time, we skated out to
our island and talked over the whole project of the Enchanted Bluff,
renewing our resolution to find it.

Although that was twenty years ago, none of us have ever climbed the
Enchanted Bluff. Percy Pound is a stockbroker in Kansas City and will go
nowhere that his red touring car cannot carry him. Otto Hassler went
on the railroad and lost his foot braking; after which he and Fritz
succeeded their father as the town tailors.

Arthur sat about the sleepy little town all his life--he died before he
was twenty-five. The last time I saw him, when I was home on one of my
college vacations, he was sitting in a steamer chair under a cottonwood
tree i