Conover surveyed his taciturn fellow sufferers; glanced over the too-populous room, from the rack-frieze of neatly triangular folded towels to the ash-and-cuspidor strewn carpet; then he slouched out into the relatively fresh air of the aisle. He looked at his watch. The hour was six-thirty. At seven they were due at Raquette Lake station. The car was last of the train. It occurred to Caleb to take his first glimpse of the Adirondacks. He walked to the rear door and looked out. Behind him wound the single track of the little spur road. On either side it was lined by dark evergreens that stretched away in an endless vista of monochrome until the silver mist that hung low over everything blotted them from vision. The train seemed to be ploughing its way straight into the untrodden wilderness; to be the first alien that ever had intruded upon the vast mystic solitudes of green and gray. Caleb looked long and without stirring. Then as the negro porter chanced to come near, the watcher’s pent up volume of emotion found vent in one pregnant sentence: “Here, you!” he hailed. “I’ll give you a dollar if you can rustle me a cup of hot coffee!” * * * * * Out into the clinging mist, onto a long wooden platform, tumbled the travelers; Caleb in the first rank. There, drawn up to halt their onset, comic opera chorus-like, were ranged the vociferating station clerks of the lake’s various hotel-camps. A breath of keen balsam-tinged air bit to Conover’s very lungs. Instinctively he threw out his chest drinking in great gulps of strange ozone. From out of the swirling mist before him rose of a sudden a slight, girlish figure that ran forward with a glad little cry and caught both his hands. “Oh, you’re here! You’re _here_!” rejoiced Desirée, careless of bystanders. “Mrs. Hawarden said I’d catch my death if I was on the lake so early. But I got up at the screech of dawn, and came. Isn’t it all wonderful? This mist will burn up in a little while and then you’ll _see_! And do Billy and Aunt Mary still like farm life? Oh, it’s so good--so _good_--to see you! Come. The Antlers launch is around the other side of the station.” Clinging gleefully to one of his big arms, the girl piloted him through the scurrying groups and the luggage heaps, to a nearby dock where a half score of waiting launches panted. From one of the largest fluttered a dark blue flag with the name “Antlers” picked out on it in white. Into the launch they piled; Desirée still talking in pretty, eager excitement. “This is the south end of the lake,” she was explaining. “There’s the store over yonder--that farthest red building--and there’s the Raquette Lake House. We had a dance there one night. And out there--” with a wave toward the wall of shining vapor, “is where we’re going. It’s only a mile. We’ll start as soon as the rest can get aboard. Oh, I _wish_ the mist was gone, so you could see the islands, and old Blue Mountain keeping guard over--”