Page:Boy scouts in the White Mountains; the story of a long hike (IA boyscoutsinwhite00eato).pdf/52

 at least thirty feet deep. The brook came into the upper end over a series of waterfalls, and ran out of the lower end, where the boys were, down another fall. Frank took a picture of it, and then they crossed the brook at the lower end, and followed the path up along the top. The path brought them into another logging road, which presently came out into a level clearing. As they had not seen the top of the mountain since they entered the woods, everybody gave a gasp now. There, ahead of them, was the summit—but looking just as high, just as far off, as ever! Art pulled out his watch.

"We've been going an hour and a quarter—whew!" he said. "I thought we were 'most there."

"A little bigger than it looks, eh?" Mr. Rogers laughed. "Most mountains fool you that way."

The party plodded on a way across the level plateau, and then the ascent began again—up, up, up, by a path which had evidently once been a logging road, but had now been eroded by the water, till it was little better than the dry bed of a brook—and not always dry at that. The boys began to pant, and mop their foreheads. Then they began to shift their blanket rolls from one shoulder to the other. The pace had slowed down.

"How about that mile an hour being ridiculously slow, Art?" Mr. Rogers inquired.