Page:To the Summit of Cardigan (1922).djvu/15

 —Mount Cuba, toward the Connecticut, and Moosilauke, grand, gloomy and peculiar, and beautiful, graceful Lafayette, and now the looming masses of the Presidential Range. What a vision of massive grandeur! But now a precipice yawned before the climber, The way was blocked in that direction. He could only retrace his steps, feasting his eyes on the great land of the granite hills, the many-inleted lakes, and the far-stretching, billowing forests. And the big wind, never ceasing, pulling and pushing all the time, shrieking in the ears, threatening and thrilling as it threatened! It was an exalting experience, not to be left behind without regret. But after the Nomad had got back to the lee of his rock, and had eaten his lunch, there was nothing for it but to clamber back over the rocks, and descend the trail which he had climbed, and hobnob with the hobblebushes once more, and wend his way serenely over the long country road past the bleak farms of Orange back to the little lake of his holiday sojourning.

To Cardigan he will go once more one of these days. It is a mountain to love. He does not resent, by any means, the apparent inhospitality of that summit when he visited it the other day; but the next time he goes he trusts that he will not be companioned by the hurricane.