It was nearly sunset and the light had some time disappeared from the valleys lying in the shade of the western peaks, when the last stony trough and the last corduroy road of Mount Clinton was finally repassed, and the whole cavalcade, each member of it perhaps moved by the one idea of showing that neither horse nor rider was wearied out--broke once more into a trot as they caught the first glimpse of the Crawford through the trees, dashed merrily out from the edge of the woods, and came up in straggling but picturesque order to the door of the great caravanserai. The difficult ride of eighteen miles had been accomplished; the golden day (with its one drawback of momentary peril) was over; and more than half a score who had before only thought of the ascent of Mount Washington as a future possibility, suddenly found that they could look back upon it as a remembrance. As they rode up to the front of the Crawford, the whole end of the piazza was full of new-comers and late sojourners, watching the return of those who had preceded or followed them--an idle, listless sort of gathering, showing more curiosity than welcome, such as the traveller by rail or steamboat sees crowding every platform at the expected time of the arrival of a train and every pier at the hour for the coming in of a boat. Cries of: "All safe, eh?" "Glad to see you back again!" "Hope you had a pleasant day!" and "Well, how did you like Mount Washington?" broke from twenty lips in a moment, mingled with replies and non-replies that came simultaneously: "Oh, you ought to have gone up with us!" "My horse carried me like a bird!" (the last remark, presumably, from a fat man of two hundred and sixty, whom not even an elephant could have borne in that suggestively buoyant manner), "Never _was_ such a day for going up, in the world!" "Safe, eh? Yes, why not?" (that from a person, no doubt, who had really been prodigiously scared at some period of the ride), and the one inevitable pendant: "Oh, you have no idea what an adventure we have had!--one of the ladies came near being killed--tell you all about it by-and-bye," etc., etc.