It was long past tea-time when the boys returned from their pleasure jaunt, and told in high good spirits of the “bully” time they had had, what they had seen at the movies, and many other sights. Nathalie’s joy almost equaled the boys’ when they descended from the car, and she saw three smartly equipped lads, each one in a khaki suit, with brown shoes, a brimmed hat, a knapsack, and, the most prized possession of all, a gun! The girl’s eyes filled with tears, and she had rather a tremulous time of it as she thanked Mr. Banker for his kindness, and especially for those _much-needed clothes_. Nathalie, with her brown-suited boys,—Tony with his violin and his embroidered vest, as he had soon discarded his khaki suit, Jean with his empty sleeve, and yellow-brown terrier,—and Sheila, in a pink sunbonnet, soon became familiar objects on the mountain roads. They were always greeted with pleasant smiles and nods from the passing tourists, Jean being regarded with more than the usual curiosity, as his story had been rumored about. Many of them would stop and give him money, until he had so many silver coins that Nathalie had to make him a bag to keep them in, as he had declared that he was going to save them to take him back to France, so he could find his father. It was not long before they had not only become hardy mountaineers, but familiar with all the near-by walks in and around Franconia and Sugar Hill. Jean, too, had begun to show a decided improvement, not only having gained flesh and color, but having a brighter and more cheerful expression in his eyes. And so the sunny days passed, cementing the bond between Nathalie and her charges, and each one learning something that would be of help in the days to come. And then, one day, Nathalie had an inspiration! CHAPTER XIV “SONS OF LIBERTY” One day Nathalie led the boys to a terrace, a few feet back of a brown-shingled cottage across the road from Peckett’s, and which stood on a lower spur of Garnet Mountain, facing the Franconia Range. Here, on this grassy ridge, gently sloping down to a green meadow below, skirted by a tree-fringed road edging the rocky pasture-land which gradually merged into the lower slopes of the range, she pointed out King Lafayette, and his lower mate, Lincoln, with his two slides. The Sleeping Infant, lying between the latter and Garfield’s sharply defined peak, was immediately heralded by the little maid, Sheila, as the long-lost infant, which some kind-hearted fairy some day, with her magic wand, would awaken. The Twins, and the huge Sleeping Giant, and some of the lower peaks, all came in for a share in the mystic doings of the little girl’s fanciful imagination.