There were not less than a dozen persons remaining at the Profile, who had the ascent of Mount Washington yet to make at an early day, and who intended to make it in the good old traditional way of horseback from the Crawford instead of acknowledging modern utility and bowing to the destruction of all romance by going up in carriages from the Glen. Some of these, beginning to be pressed for time, saw the steady rain and mist with impatience and found very little comfort in the assurances of the hotel-keepers, guides and stage-drivers, that the clouds were not likely to break away under a week, at least. Monday brought this feeling to a culmination, and that morning, spite of all predictions, the impatient dozen ordered a stage and determined to drive over to the Crawford; bespeaking clear weather on the morrow, or on the next day at farthest, for their especial accommodation. Horace Townsend, whether wearied by circumstances which placed him "so near and yet so far" in his acquaintance with Margaret Hayley, or really touched with the prevailing madness for forcing Mount Washington to smile when that great mountain wished to be sullen,--Horace Townsend joined the malcontents and formed one of the closely-packed stage-load that on Monday morning rolled off from the Profile on their way to the Crawford. The voyagers were pursued by no small number of jokes and jeers from the piazza, as they drove away, on the folly of plunging out into a storm to accomplish an impossibility. But if any one of the number felt for a moment sore in mind and faint-hearted, they were soon consoled. Most of them (mixed male and female, though the former predominating) were true Nature-lovers who had recognized that however Fame and Fortune sometimes play cruel tricks upon their most ardent votaries, the kind Mother seldom failed to unveil her bosom at the coming of one of her true children. They had faith in the future, and that faith was at once repaid in the glory of the present. For those who have only made the twenty-five miles of stage-ride between the two places, in fair weather, can have no idea of the peculiar charms of that day of capricious rain and floating mist. Closely shut in the lumbering coach, and well enveloped in shawls and dread-noughts and blankets, but with the windows open to allow looking back on the Franconia range they were leaving,--they enjoyed at intervals, during all the earlier portions of the ride, such splendid glimpses of cloud-land as never fall to the lot of mere fair-weather travellers.