As they came down the worn road, side by side they chose with experienced care those wheel ruts where the black dust lay thickest and, in solemn earnestness, plowed the hot tracks with their bare feet, as if their one mission in life were to add the largest possible cloud of powdered dirt to the already murky atmosphere of the vicinity. Suddenly they stood still. For a long, silent moment they gazed at a rickety old wooden stairway that, at this point in the unbroken line of cliffs, climbs zigzag up the face of the rock-buttressed wall. Then, as if moved by a common impulse, they faced each other. The quick fire of adventure kindled in the eyes of the boy as he met the girl's look of understanding. "Let's go up--stump yer," he said, with a daredevil grin. "Huh, yer wouldn't dast." Womanlike, she was hoping that he would "dast" and, with the true instinct of her sex, she chose unerringly the one way to bring about the realization of her hope. Her companion met the challenge like a man. With a swaggering show of courage, he went to the stairway and climbed boldly up--six full steps. Then he paused and looked down, "I don't dast, don't I?" From the lower step she spurred his faltering spirit, "Dare yer--dare yer--dare yer." He came reluctantly down two steps, "Will yer go up if I do?" She nodded, "Uh-huh--but yer gotter go first." He looked doubtfully up at the edge of the cliff so far above them. "Shucks," he said, with conviction, "ain't nobody up there 'cept old Interpreter, an' that dummy, Billy Rand. I know 'cause Skinny Davis an' Chuck Wilson, they told me. They was up--old Interpreter, he can't do nothin' to nobody--he ain't got no legs." Gravely she considered with him the possible dangers of the proposed adventure. "Billy Rand has got legs." "He can't hear nothin', though--can't talk neither," said the leader of the expedition. "An' besides maybe he ain't there--we might catch him out. What d'yer say? Will we chance it?" She looked up doubtfully toward the unknown land above. "I dunno, will we?" "Skinny an' Chuck, they said the Interpreter give 'em cookies--an' told 'em stories too." "Cookies, Gee! Go ahead--I'm a-comin'." That tiny house high on the cliff at the head of the old, zigzag stairway, up which the children now climbed with many doubtful stops and questioning fears, is a landmark of interest not only to Millsburgh but to the country people for miles around.