the solemn darkness of the wooded ascent beyond.

Few, even of the scouts, had ever penetrated the enshrouding wilderness
of that dizzy, forbidding height. There were strange tales, usually told
to tenderfeet around the camp-fire, of mysterious hermits and ferocious
bears and half-savage men who lurked high up in those all but
inaccessible fastnesses, but no scout from Temple Camp had ever
ascended beyond the lower reaches of that frowning old monarch.

At Temple Camp, when the cheery blaze was crackling in the witching hour
of yarn telling, the seasoned habitués of the camp would direct the eye
of the newcomer to a little glint of light high up upon the mountain,
and edify him with dark tales of a lonesome draft dodger who had
challenged that tangled profusion of tree and brush to escape going to
war and had never been able to find his way down again--a quite just
punishment for his cowardice. But time and again this freakish glint of
light had been proven to be the reflection of that very camp-fire upon a
huge rock lodged up there and held by interlacing roots.

Tom and Hervey stood upon a ledge of rock just outside the area of a
great elm tree, and as they looked down and afar off, Black Lake seemed
a mere puddle with toy cabins near it.

"I bet there are wild animals up there," Hervey said.

"Here's one of them now," commented Tom, pointing upward.

High above them in the dusk and with a background of golden-edged
clouds, which gave the sun's last parting message to the earth, a great
bird hovered motionless. It seemed to hang in air as if by a thread.