As they went, however, a look away from the sun showed the shadow of Washington cast over the clouds westward as far as the eye could see. Peanut waved his arm. “The shadow of that gesture was on the side of Lafayette!” he cried. Breakfast was prepared as quickly as possible, the boys furnishing powdered eggs, the men bacon and coffee. Then, after they had paid the keeper of the coach house for their night’s lodging, the combined parties shouldered packs, went back up the steps in a thin white cloud, stocked up with sweet chocolate at the Tip Top House, and still in the cloud set off southwest down the summit cone, by the Crawford Bridle Path. The descent was rapid. The cone is a thousand feet high, but they were soon on Bigelow Lawn, and though the white mists were still coming up over the ridge from the gulfs below, they were thin here, and the sunlight flashed in, and below them they could see the green intervale of Bretton Woods, shining in full morning light. “Rather more cheerful than yesterday,” said Frank. “Ra-_ther_,” cried Peanut. At the junction of the Boott Spur Trail, everybody unloaded all baggage, and the packs and blankets were piled under a boulder. Then they hurried on down the Bridle Path, past the refuge hut which had been such a friend the day before, and soon reached the larger of the two Lakes of the Clouds, which lies just north of the Crawford Trail, on the very edge of the Monroe-Washington col, exactly two miles below the summit. The larger lake is perhaps half an acre in extent, the smaller hardly a third of that size. “These lakes are the highest east of the Rocky Mountains,” said Mr. Rogers. “They are 5,053 feet above sea level.” “And a deer has been drinking in this one,” said Art, pointing to a hoof mark in the soft, deep moss at the margin. “Sure enough!” one of the men said. “He must have come up from timber line, probably over from Oakes Gulf.” “You remember, boys,” Mr. Rogers said, “that I told you I was going to show you the head waters of a river? Well, we saw one at the Crawford House--the head of the Saco. This lake is one of the head waters of the Ammonoosuc, which is the biggest northern tributary of the Connecticut.” “It’s a bit cleaner than the Connecticut is at Hartford or Springfield,” laughed Rob. “My, it’s like pure glass! Look, you can see every stick and piece of mica on the bottom.” “And it’s cold, too!” cried Art, as he dipped his hand in. “Now, let’s look at the Alpine wild flowers as we go back,” said the bugler. “They are what interest me most.” The party turned toward the path again, and they became aware that almost every crevice between the loose stones was full of rich moss of many kinds, and this moss had made bits of peaty soil in which the wild flowers grew. There were even a few dwarfed spruces, three or four feet high, all around the border of the lake. The wild flowers were now in full bloom.