Every portion of the loyal States (and no doubt a portion of the disloyal, if the truth could have been known!) had seemed to be represented in the crowd that thronged the platforms while fighting for a mouthful of lunch at Nashua Junction or crowding in to a hurried dinner at the poor substitute for the burned Pemigawasset House at Plymouth. There were even half a dozen resident Europeans--English, Scotch, with one Frenchman who snuffed continually, and one Spaniard who smoked in season and out of season--people who had no doubt rushed over to see the "American war," but very soon found the South too hot for comfort, in one sense or the other,--among the number destined to add variety to the overfilled caravanserais of the Franconia and White ranges. A few had dropped away at Weir's Landing, for a day or two on Lake Winnipiseogee, enticed by the pleasant loom of Centre Harbor down the bright blue water and the romantic figure of the Lady of the Lake on the prow of her namesake steamer; and a few more had left the train at Plymouth for the long coach-ride of thirty miles through the mountains to the Glen House, or by the southern approach to the Profile or the Crawford. Two or three stage-loads, too, who had but one thought in their pilgrimage--Mount Washington,--were bustling in for the immediate ride from Littleton to the Crawford; but there were still four heavy stage-loads--not less than forty to fifty persons--going on to the crowded Profile House that evening. Some of the occupants of one of those heavy stages, rolling away towards the Profile, require, for the purposes of this narration, a somewhat closer view than was probably taken of them by many of their fellow-passengers; and that view cannot be more appropriately taken than at this moment. On the back seat of that vehicle sat two ladies, with a troublesome boy of ten years wedged in between them as if to come the nearest possible to getting him out of the way. Neither paid the youngster that attention which would have indicated that he belonged to them or was travelling in their company; and indeed they had every right as well as every inclination to wash their hands of his relationship if they could not wash from their travelling-dresses the marks of his taffy-smeared fingers. The two ladies were evidently mother and daughter; and at least one person in the coach had remarked them as they came up from Concord, and seen that their sole chaperon and protector seemed to be a son of the one and brother of the other, some eighteen or twenty years of age. As he saw them then and as he afterwards better knew them, they may be briefly described.