The dull weather had driven almost all the visitors within doors, at the Crawford as at the Profile; but as the splashed coach rolled up there was at least one recognition--that of Halstead Rowan by Horace Townsend, the former, without any apparent reference to the humidity of the atmosphere, lying at lazy length on three chairs on the piazza and occupied with a cigar and a cheap novel. He had "shed" (that word seems to express the fact better than any other) his over-sized glove from his wounded hand, and seemed entirely to have recovered the use of that important member. New acquaintances become old and ripen into friendships, very soon when all other surroundings are totally strange; and the two men, each so odd in his way, greeted each other as if they had been friends for a decade instead of intimates of less than a week. There may have been some bond in common, in the guess which each could make of the thoughts and entanglements of the other, calculated to force that friendship forward, even if it would have progressed more slowly under other circumstances. The first inquiry of Townsend, as they shook each other warmly by the hand, was: "Been up Mount Washington yet?" "Not _this time_!" answered the other, significantly. "The fog has been nearly thick enough to swim in, ever since I have been here, and I do not know, if I had been as good a swimmer as you, Townsend, whether I should not have tried going up by water, as our friend Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame went up the Alps; but by land the thing has been impossible." "Many waiting to go up?--or do they nearly all go around to the Glen, this season?" was the next inquiry. "No, there are a good many sensible people left," was the reply, in the same tone of vivacious rattle. "Think of going up Mount Washington in a carriage! It is worse than making a mill-race out of Niagara, or approaching Jerusalem, as they will do one of these days, I suppose, amid the rumble and whistle of a railroad-train." "Don't undervalue your own employment!" said Townsend. "Oh, I do not," was the reply. "Railroad trains, as well as mills, are very good things in their places; but I suppose that a prejudice will always exist in favor of the fiery chariot instead of the balloon, as a means of making ascents into the celestial regions." Horace Townsend laughed. "But you have not yet told me how many are waiting, or when you are really going up." "Oh, there must be nearly or quite twenty of them, moping around the house, running out to look at the sky every ten minutes, and asking the clerk and the guides questions that they are about as fit to answer as a prairie-chicken to solve a problem in geometry! As to when we are going up--do _you_ know?" "_I_ am going up to-morrow, whether any one else goes up or not," said the lawyer. "And by the way, I have bespoken a clear day for that especial occasion."