Sometimes they would pause to listen to the mountain-wind as it swayed the tops of long rows of trees, that, with the daring recklessness of new life, stretched their bare-limbed trunks upward to catch the golden sunlight on their glossy leaves. But the sweetest melody, perhaps, was the wind that swept in solemn-toned harmony through the twisted boughs of the old mountain-guard. But the wind was not the only musician that sunny morning up there in the stilled hush of the green wood, for sometimes it was the soft note of a belated bird’s warble, coming with a haunting sweetness from the dim recesses of the shadowed gloom, or the hammer of a woodpecker as he plied his tool of trade. But feathered songsters and musical wind were forgotten when the children struck the Red Trail,—splashes of red paint smeared at intervals on the bark of the trees to keep travelers in the path. The boys, as they scurried ahead, soon discovered a Yellow Trail, and then a Blue Trail, sign-posts to the lone woodchopper, perhaps, as he comes down the woodland path in the deep snows of winter. The Yellow Trail, they discovered, led down the mountain, coming out on the road near Lovers’ Lane, the wooded path opposite Seven Pillars. Nathalie now showed them how to blaze a trail that belonged exclusively to the Girl Pioneers, and their interest became tense with excitement as she became their leader and deftly bent the twigs in the shapes that meant so many things to the Pioneers. A little log cabin nestling beneath a clump of pine trees, on the edge of a slope, just below Agassiz’s Rock, tempted the children to wander from the beaten path. But they soon returned, and, in wide-eyed wonder, declared that they had seen a pair of shoes by the door. Sheila was quite insistent that some fairy godmother lived there, whereupon she was rudely told by the boys that fairies never wore shoes. The children, however, were loth to leave the spot, curiously wondering as to who lived in the log hut. But as no one was to be seen, either within or without the cabin, they followed Nathalie, and were soon standing on a jagged rock on Garnet’s top, in a wonderland of views that made them feel that they were indeed birds of the air, skimming swiftly through a dim, mystical atmosphere. With hushed breath and wide-seeing eyes they gazed down upon low-lying valleys,—dabs of green between craggy rocks and lofty steeps, gemmed with silver water, yellow corn-fields, and brown pasture-land. And above all, in picturesque grandeur, towered a rim of battlemented crests and ridges, silhouetted against curtains of crystalline blue, where sweeps of white cloud drifted in gossamer veils.