At the little rustic shop beyond the station, the girls stopped for caramels, packages of which the sterner element dutifully tucked into their coat-pockets, ready for instant use. Thus provisioned, they all struck off in the direction of the Notch, walking in twos and threes, on the railroad ties, or balancing with little shrieks and a great deal of laughter on the narrow rails. Lou, as usual, was ahead, but Fred soon caught up and took his place at her side. For several minutes, nothing was said by either. Then Lou exclaimed, almost pettishly: “Why do you try to be so quiet, and exact, and—and _different_?” “You know, Lou, I can’t stand quite so much as some of the other fellows. The doctor——” “Oh, yes, I know. You’re up here for your health, and all that; but you might ‘fly around’ a little more, get a little bit—just the least little bit—rumpled, once in a while, like the rest of us!” Fred laughed now, merrily enough, and perhaps would have defended himself, had not another boy of about his own age joined them at that moment, having caught the import of the girl’s words. “If you think Seacomb _can’t_ ‘fly around,’ Miss Elwin, you ought to see him in the gymnasium, at Harvard! He’s the best man on the bars in the Freshman class, and he can——” “There, there, Arthur!” interrupted Fred, “girls don’t care about such affairs as that. My blackest sin, just now, is the shine on my boots, isn’t it, Lou?” Fred had known her long, and as an intimate friend, and so he used her first name easily—a liberty rather envied by some of the later comers. At the end of the Crawford plateau, they all turned away from the track for a few moments, to visit “The House that Jack Built.” Of the mysterious “Jack,” who was popularly believed to subsist on toads and snakes, the girls stood rather in awe, and so they left the boys to do the talking. Somewhat to Lou’s surprise, Fred Seacomb seemed to be on excellent terms with the bluff Jack, who had been an English sailor. The party soon chorused good-bye, and ran back down the path to the track, to resume their excursion. They now entered the Notch itself, and for a few minutes even their gay laughter was hushed in the presence of those gray cliffs towering high, high above their heads. It seemed as if they were leaving the land of sunshine behind them, and were entering the very home of storm and avalanche. The iron track, clinging to the crumbling slope, gave no sense of security or conquest over the terrible forces of nature; rather, it was a frightened thing, like each one of themselves, at the mercy of the stern, granite-browed hills overhanging it.