Randolph had told him of some of the other drawbacks involved in the
excursion. "It's a long way to go, even when you pass up the trolley and
make a single big bolt by train. And it leads through an industrial region
that is mighty unprepossessing--little beauty until almost the end. And
even when you get there, it may all seem a slight and simple affair for the
time and trouble taken--unless you really like Nature. And lastly," he
said, with a sidelong glance at Cope, "you may find yourself, as the day
wears on, getting a little too much of my company."

"Oh, I hope that doesn't mean," returned Cope, with another ingenuous
unchaining of his native resonance, "that you are afraid of getting a
little too much of mine! I'm fond of novelty, and nobody can frighten me."

"If that's the case, let's get away as early in the day as we can.
Breakfasts, of course, are late in every household on Sunday. So let's meet
at the Maroon-and-Purple Tavern at seven-thirty, and make a flying start at
eight."

Sunday morning came clear and calm and warm to the town,--a belated
September day, or possibly an early intimation of Indian summer,--and it
promised to be even more delightful in the favored region toward which our
friends were journeying. After they had cleared many miles of foundries and
railroad crossings, and had paralleled for a last half-hour a distant
succession of sandhills, wooded or glistening white, they were set down at
a small group of farmhouses, with a varied walk of five miles before them.
Half a mile through a shaded country lane; another half-mile along a path
that led across low, damp ground through thickets of hazel and brier; a
third half-mile over a light soil, increasingly sandy, beneath oaks and
lindens and pines which cloaked the outlines of the slopes ahead; and
finally a great mound of pure sand that slanted up into a blue sky and made