It yet wanted half an hour to noon, and Mount Washington towered full before them as they came out on the top of Franklin, by the little Lake of the Clouds which lay so saucily smiling to the sun and coquetting with the mists. The peak, a huge mass of broken and naked stone, half a mile up on every side and so sheer in pitch that foot-hold seemed hopeless, would have looked totally discouraging but for the white line of path which, winding around it on the north-west, showed that it must before have been achieved. Up--up--over broken and slipping stones of every size and description, from the dimensions of a brick-bat to those of a dining-table--stones gray and mossed, without one spoonful of earth to prove that the riders had not surmounted the whole habitable globe and lost themselves in some unnatural wilderness of rock! And feeling joined with sight to enhance the desolate fancy, for though so nearly high noon the wind blew at that dizzy height with the violence of a gale, and the Guernsey wrappers and the clumsy gloves had long before proved that the rough and homely may be more useful than the beautiful. Two or three hundred yards from the Tip-Top House, the rough stone walls of which were glooming above--the party were dismounted, the horses picketed by the guides, and over the broken stones and yawning fissures the dismounted riders struggled up, strong arms aiding weaker limbs, and much care necessary to prevent heedless steps that might have caused injuries slow of recovery. Up--up, over the little but difficult remaining distance--till all stood by the High Altar on the top of Mount Washington.