Page:Boy scouts in the White Mountains; the story of a long hike (IA boyscoutsinwhite00eato).pdf/223

 wails through the rigging of a ship. It was getting dark, too. The boys shivered, and nobody suggested any exploring.

"Me for supper, and bunk," said Peanut.

They crossed the railroad with its cog rail between the two wheel rails, and descended a long flight of steps. At the bottom was the end of the carriage road, which they could see disappearing into the cloud to the east, a barn on the left, chained down to the rocks, and on the right a square, two-story building, the carriage house.

Inside, a lamp was already lighted, and the four men who had come down the mountain with the bugler, as well as the evident proprietor of the house, were sitting about the stove, which was crammed with wood and roaring hotly

"Well?" said the four, as the Scouts and the bugler entered. "Any more people to go down and rescue?"

The bugler shook his head. "Haven't heard of any," he said. "There's no word of any one else trying the Crawford Path to-day. Anybody that tackled Tuckerman's will certainly have had sense enough to stay in the camp. That party who came over the Gulf Side this morning with us decided to go down the carriage road, they tell me. I guess we've got this place to ourselves."

"Oh, it's a good, soft floor," one of the men