It was a swift whirl down the half-mile hill, and then they were passing through the little mountain village of Franconia, with its white cottages, its stone sidewalks, its beautiful Gale River, with its bush-fringed banks and little stone tower, surrounded by level stretches of green pasture-land, merging into the low foothills that skirted the higher range. It was a wonderful ride through that five-mile Notch, in the glint of the rose-tipped sunlight, with the ever-changing flash from one mountain-picture to another, each one gripping you with the witchery of the illusive charm of Nature in her varying moods, now frolicsome, gay, or blithe, or strangely stilled in the grandeur of a sunrise calm. As the girl came down the steps of the Profile House, her first stopping-place, she paused a moment and peered up at Eagle Cliff, a precipitous wall of rock opposite, rising to the height of fifteen hundred feet above the road. It was thickly set with evergreens, climbing birches, maples, and spruces, and intermingled with patches of a softer green, from where purple-tinted bits of rock, like giant’s eyes, looked down upon the wayfarers that traversed the road beneath. Nathalie had heard that the cliff had received its name from the “Arabs of the air,” which at one time had lodged in its airy heights. But evidently they had long since departed, and after a disappointed glance, as her eyes swept the tall steeps, she rejoined Janet in the car, and was soon guiding it through the green-wooded road to her next halting-place, some few miles beyond. This was the Flume House, a long, low, yellow building, grouped about with mountain crags,—the gateway to the Flume, a remarkable fissure in Liberty Mountain, over fifty feet deep, and several hundred long, where an ice-cold cascade dashed with snowy spray, to flow in more quiet mood over ledges of granite rocks between perpendicular walls. After leaving their flowers at the office the girls started on their homeward way. The distance was soon traversed as they chattered of the scene before them, sometimes hushed into stillness by the sudden surprise of some wonderful trick of Nature as they flew swiftly past. As they reached the little schoolhouse at the crossroads Janet descended from the car to walk up the hill to the house, while Nathalie continued on her way. She had soon passed the artist’s bungalow, with its studio, on her left, and Hildreth’s maple-sugar farm, with its big barn, coming out shortly at the little red Episcopal church, with the deserted, falling-to-pieces hotel, the Marimonte, just beyond on a knoll. It did not take her long to ascend the long hilly slope to the Hotel Look-off, where a basket of sweet peas were left, and then she had swung her car around and was speeding down the declivity to the Sunset Hill House, where she again brought her car to a halt.