The threatened explosion had arrived. That wagon-load of people laughed, shrieked and roared, bent double and chuckled themselves red in the face, to a degree which was very discreditable to their sense of propriety and very bewildering to the mountain echoes. Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame looked around to see what was the matter, and at that moment it seemed that a dim perception must have crept through her head that she had something to do with the merriment, for she reddened, bridled and grew strangely silent. Halstead Rowan, as she looked around,--not by any means joining in the laugh, had suddenly discovered that his legs were cramped from riding, sprung over the side of the wagon and disappeared behind a bend of the road, to make the rest of the short distance to the Flume House on foot. A mile further, after this novel lesson in geography had been taken, and the wagons drew up at the door of the Flume House, once a great caravanserai that rivalled any other in the mountains, then a mere unoccupied pendant of the all-absorbing Profile which has literally swallowed it. It stands at the lower end of the Franconia Notch proper, and the mountains fall away below it southward, so much that the feeling of oppressive isolation at the Profile is here lost entirely. But there is one charm connected with the Flume House, that can never be forgotten by those who have once stood there and looked eastward; and the merry occupants of the before-deserted piazza, that day, were not likely to be allowed to ride away without having that charm called to their attention, to be remembered ever after as one of those marvels with which Nature confounds Art and defies calculation.