“It’s spring up here, you know, in early July,” said the bugler. “Look at all those white sandwort blossoms, like a snow-storm. What pretty little things they are, like tiny white cups.” “What’s the yellow one?” asked Lou, who was always interested in plants. “That’s the geum,” the man replied. “Look at the root leaves--they are just like kidneys.” “It’s everywhere,” said Lou. “Look, it even grows in cracks half-way up the rocks.” The man also pointed out the tiny stars of the Houstonia, which interested the boys, because their Massachusetts home was near the Housatonic River. But the botanist assured them that there was no connection between the names, the flower being named for a botanist named Houston, while the river’s name is Indian. There were several other kinds of flowers here, too, as well as grasses, and conspicuous among them was the Indian poke, sticking up its tall stalk three feet in the boggy hollows between rocks, its roots in the wet tundra moss, with yellowish-green blossoms at the top. “Well, who’d ever guess so many things could live way up here, on the rocks!” Lou exclaimed. “But I like the little sandwort best. That’s the one which gets nearest the top of Washington, isn’t it?” “It’s the only one which gets there, except the grass, I believe,” the bugler answered. Everybody picked a few sandwort cups, and stuck them in his hat band or buttonhole, and thus arrayed they reached once more the junction of the Boott Spur Trail, shouldered packs, and set off southward, down the long, rocky shoulder of the spur, which pushes out from the base of the summit cone. The sun was now high. The clouds had stopped coming up over the head walls of the ravines. They could see for miles, even to the blue ramparts of Lafayette and Moosilauke in the west and southwest. Directly south they looked over a billowing sea of mountains and green, forest-covered valleys, a wilderness in which there was no sign of human beings. To their left was the deep hole of Tuckerman’s Ravine, gouged out of the solid rock. Only the very summit of Washington behind them still wore a hood of white vapor. It was only three-quarters of a mile to the nose of the spur, and they were soon there. Here the two parties were to divide, the boys going down to the left into the yawning hole of Tuckerman’s Ravine, which they could now see plainly, directly below them, the other trampers turning to the southwest, for their long descent over the Davis Path and the Montalban range. At the nose of the spur was a big cairn, and out of it the bugler fished an Appalachian Mountain Club cylinder, opened it, and disclosed the register, upon which they all wrote their names. Then they all shook hands, the bugler blew a long blast on his bugle, and the Scouts watched their friends of the night go striding off down the Davis Path. “Now, where do _we_ go?” asked Art.