"S'pose we needn't go more than thirty or forty miles back from the road!" ejaculated MacLester grimly. He was quite out of breath from the effort of up-ending a heavy pole that had lain across the trail. Also, as has been noted earlier, he was just the least bit tired and impatient. "No farther back than we have to go to find a snug camping place," Phil responded with extra good humor. For cheerfulness is contagious and does a great deal more to brighten up another's despondent mood than any sort of remonstrance against being glum could do. "Maybe that little point down by the creek is just what we want, now," Way went on gayly. "Hold up, Bill, till we peek around here some." The point did offer many advantages, being a low, grassy place, like a small peninsula, where a water course curved about till it finally reached the main stream. The creek formed a considerable pool just below the junction with the water-worn trench; for, while the latter, though deep, was now nearly dry, it was apparent that in time of rain its torrents rushed into the larger stream with both force and volume. "Rather flat and low, but pretty good at that," observed Way, hopefully surveying the situation. "But maybe we'd better look a little further. What do you think, Mac?" "Reckon so," said Dave, and telling Worth to wait, the two went forward to investigate. Paul Jones meanwhile had been tracing the deep, narrow bed of the smaller stream, filled with the idea that its source must be in some spring. And presently he came running back shouting at the top of his voice--"Yelling like a wooden Indian," Billy said--"Say! oh, say! Here's the hunky-doriest place you ever dreamed about! Here's the one spot in all your natural life, for a fact!" The rapturous enthusiasm of Jones' tones caused Worth to jump down from the car and hurry toward him. Dave and Phil, now some distance forward, also hastened back, and together the quartette climbed the rise of ground toward the woods. What they found fully accounted for Paul's delighted manner. Here on a shelving plateau of conglomerate rock, overgrown with moss and patches of velvety grass, was a level space several hundred feet in length and perhaps fifty feet from the abrupt descent at its front to the rough, irregular wall of natural stonework, rising as high as the tops of the trees, at the back. From a wide but shallow cave, in the wall at the rear, there trickled a beautifully clear and cool spring. For a time the water rested in a natural basin in the rocks, then overflowed through a tiny channel of its own making. Deeper and wider this channel grew and so became the water course, previously described, leading to the creek.