Looking up stream from the low wooden bridge at the public road, one could see that a sharp, irregular, wooded steep marked the limits of the valley on the east. The rise of ground began only two score yards distant from the water and with it began, also, a thick growth of mostly small trees and brush. Rough ledges of sandstone and conglomerate rock cropped out of the earth in many places here, but the strip of land between the stream and the hillside was cleared of timber and lay quite level. Two parallel paths through the coarse grass and among the straggling bushes marked a primitive roadway midway between the slope and the creek. It extended back through the valley, apparently, to where the woods a quarter of a mile distant from the highway, stretched down from hill to hill, hiding the creek and all beyond. As the sun was going down there rolled along the unfenced public road skirting for nearly two miles this southern boundary of the Ship woods, a heavily laden touring car. "The bridge! The creek! That old trail through the valley--By Jinks, we're here!" cried a shrill young voice from the car. The machine had come to a halt where the rough road led back from the highway just before the bridge was reached. "Yes, we're _here_ and blessed if I see anything very thrilling about it!" came another voice, in tones of decidedly less enthusiasm. "At any rate, though, we _are here_." Is it necessary to state that Paul Jones was the first speaker and that Dave MacLester was the second? "Well, scoot ahead, somebody! See if we can get down the bank and into that pair of ruts through the grass, yonder, without turning turtle or blowing out a tire." This command, briskly delivered, came from Billy Worth who leaned, tired and dusty, on the steering wheel. "All O.K.! Come ahead!" shouted Phil Way a second later. "The track down the bank is here all right, but under the grass. Gently, Bill!" With a sudden plunge and stiff jerk the car went down the incline leading from the road and across a broad, shallow ditch. Then slowly it rolled onto the grass and weed-grown trail leading up to the valley. Way walked rapidly in advance looking out for pitfalls or possible causes of danger to tires. "Might as well get the road cleared at once, fellows," he said, and the hint was sufficient. Paul and Dave jumped down from the slowly moving machine to lend assistance. Heavy wagons in summers that were past and the logging sleds of the timber crews in winter had broken a well-marked road. It was still rough but odd chunks of wood and the stones found here and there could be and were thrown to one side. Paul Jones voiced with considerable earnestness the opinion that he would rather pilot the car than "heave dornicks" out of the road; but a subdued chuckle from Billy, lazily driving forward as the course was announced clear, was all the comfort his observation brought him.