“Oh, I like the mountains!” cried Lou. “I want to come to the mountains every year! I want to stand up under the sky and see off--way off, like this!” “That goes for me, too, even if I can’t say it so pretty,” declared Peanut. Reluctantly, they descended from the cone, picked up their packs at the hut, and with Peanut throwing back a final “Goodbye, Josh,” to the caretaker, they hit the Gulf Side Trail for a scant quarter of a mile, swung off of it to the right, and stood presently in a kind of gateway of great stones, with the world dropping out of sight between the posts. “Look back!” said Mr. Rogers. They turned. Behind them, framed by the huge stones of the natural gate, rose the cone of Madison against the blue sky--that and nothing else. “Goodbye, Maddie,” said Peanut. “Au revoir,” said Lou. “See you again next summer, maybe!” They turned once more, and at once began to drop down the head wall of King’s Ravine, a ravine almost as fine as Tuckerman’s, discovered and explored by the Reverend Thomas Starr King in 1857 and named after him. “Say, this trail has the Six Husbands’ guessing,” said Art. “Glad I’m not going up,” said Frank. “Well, nothing is steep to me after the head wall of Huntington,” Lou said. “I can see something under my feet here, at any rate.” The descent was rapid, for they dropped 1,300 feet in the five-sixteenths of a mile to the floor of the ravine, which means an ascent of 4,160 feet to the mile. Anybody good at mathematics can reckon out what this angle is. The boys estimated it roughly as they were descending at about seventy degrees. Nobody had time to figure it on paper, however, and when they got to the bottom, there was too much else to see. Anyhow, it was steep going! They found the bottom of the ravine strewn with great boulders which had fallen down from the cliffs on three sides. Some of them were as big as houses, and in a cave under one they found ice. Two paths led down the ravine, one over the boulders called “Elevated Route for Rapid Transit,” the other “The Subway.” The guide book said the latter took longer but was more interesting. “The Subway for us!” cried Peanut. So they took the Subway, and though it was not a second Lost River, this path took them by a tortuous route through several caves, and under many an overhanging boulder, where the air was chill and there were strange echoes. Again, at the lower end of the ravine, they descended rapidly for half a mile by a steep way, into the woods again at last, and finally stopped by a brook for the farewell lunch.