Page:Boy scouts in the White Mountains; the story of a long hike (IA boyscoutsinwhite00eato).pdf/260

 more practice on cliff work, and have bigger hob-*nails in my shoes, and can keep right on up."

"Still," said Frank, "people who go up places like that in the Alps have to come down again."

"Sure they do," Peanut replied, "but they're used to it. The older I grow, the more I realize it doesn't pay to tackle a job till you're up to it."

"Hear Grandpa talk!" laughed Frank. "You'd think he was fifty-three."

"He's talking horse sense, though," the Scout Master put in. "When we get home, we'll go over to the cliffs on Monument Mountain some day, with a rope, and get some practice. As a matter of fact, those cliffs, though they are only two hundred feet high, are steeper than these here, and you haven't any gully to go up, either. We'll get some Alpine work right at home."

"I'll stay at the bottom, and catch you when you fall off," said Lou, with a rather crooked smile. "Gee, to think I'd go dizzy like a girl!"

"Forget it, Lou," Peanut cheered him. "'Twasn't your fault, any more'n getting seasick."

The afternoon shadows were all across Tuckerman's Ravine when the boys once more reached the camp. It was not yet five o'clock, and out behind them the green summits of Carter and Wildcat and Moriah across the Glen, and all the peaks to the south and east, were bathed in full sunlight; but