Pretty soon the buds begin to throw off their overcoats, and Bob's Hill grows green again in the warm sunshine; the woods are bright with wild flowers, and the songs of birds and smell of spring fill the air. Then the mountains and hills tease us away from our books, when we look out of the window. The river, all swelled up with joy and melting snows, shouts for us to come on, every time we cross the bridge. On Saturdays the brook at Peck's Falls, grown big and noisy, roars out a welcome and tries to say how glad it is to have us back at the cave again. Say, how can a boy sit quiet in school when all those things are going on? Last day finally came. It always does, no matter how slowly the time seems to pass. The very next morning the Ravens met to do the final stunts that would make us First Class Scouts. For more than a week we had thought of little except the fourteen-mile hike. It took several meetings before we could decide where to go. Our first idea was to tramp up into the mountains somewhere, but that scared our folks and we had to give it up. "It isn't as if you were all going together," said Pa. "In that case, if one should get hurt the others could take care of him and go for help. If one of you alone should break your leg on the mountain we might never be able to find you. I think you'd better stick to civilization and the beaten paths. You are not mollie-coddles and probably would come out all right, anyhow. At the same time, I should sleep better nights if I knew that my boy wasn't off on the mountain somewhere, alone." That left us only two directions to go, north and south, because on the east and west there are mountains and the valley between is narrow. South near Cheshire Harbor it narrows down so much that there is room only for a wagon road, the river, and the railroad, side by side, but there is another road part way up the hill on the east. On that account we decided that all should not go on the hike the same day, but to go four at a time, each taking a different road. There are two roads leading north to North Adams, one on each side of the river, and two leading south. One goes through Maple Grove and Cheshire Harbor to Cheshire, where a lot of swell folks from New York spend their summer vacations. The other, as I have said, is part way up the east hill and goes through a place, called Pumpkin Hook. It's a queer name but we didn't name it. The plan that we finally decided on was for each to follow one road one day for seven miles; then go up into the hills somewhere to make camp for the night, and the next day to go back again by the other road. In that way we should stand a chance of meeting two Scouts some time during the trip, one on the morning of the second day, when we would be crossing over to take the other road, and one when the first boys on their way home would pass the second boys on the way out.