we are wandering from Hunter's Pass. The western walls of it are
formed by the precipices of Nipple Top, not so striking nor so bare as
the great slides of Dix which glisten in the sun like silver, but rough
and repelling, and consequently alluring. I have a great desire to scale
them. I have always had an unreasonable wish to explore the rough summit
of this crabbed hill, which is too broken and jagged for pleasure
and not high enough for glory. This desire was stimulated by a legend
related by our guide that night in the Mud Pond cabin. The guide had
never been through the pass before; although he was familiar with the
region, and had ascended Nipple Top in the winter in pursuit of the
sable. The story he told doesn't amount to much, none of the guides'
stories do, faithfully reported, and I should not have believed it if I
had not had a good deal of leisure on my hands at the time, and been of
a willing mind, and I may say in rather of a starved condition as to any
romance in this region.

The guide said then--and he mentioned it casually, in reply to our
inquiries about ascending the mountain--that there was a cave high up
among the precipices on the southeast side of Nipple Top. He scarcely
volunteered the information, and with seeming reluctance gave us any
particulars about it. I always admire this art by which the accomplished
story-teller lets his listener drag the reluctant tale of the marvelous
from him, and makes you in a manner responsible for its improbability.
If this is well managed, the listener is always eager to believe a great
deal more than the romancer seems willing to tell, and always resents
the assumed reservations and doubts of the latter.

There were strange reports about this cave when the old guide was a
boy, and even then its very existence had become legendary. Nobody knew
exactly where it was, but there was no doubt that it had been inhabited.
Hunters in the forests south of Dix had seen a light late at night
twinkling through the trees high up the mountain, and now and then a
ruddy glare as from the flaring-up of a furnace. Settlers were few in
the wilderness then, and all the inhabitants were well known. If the
cave was inhabited, it must be by strangers, and by men who had some
secret purpose in seeking this seclusion and eluding observation. If
suspicious characters were seen about Port Henry, or if any such landed
from the steamers on the shore of Lake Champlain, it was impossible t