moved a few feet farther off. Then they began feeding again, the hens following the cock in a sort of procession.
"They certainly are pretty," Rob said. "I didn't know a partridge was so pretty. Take a picture of 'em, Frank."
"Not sun enough in under those trees," Frank sighed. "I wish I could."
The boys were reluctant to leave the partridges, but the day was mounting, and they pressed on.
The trees were growing more and more stunted, and rocks began to appear in the trail. Now and then there was a break to the north, and they could see far below to the broad green intervale of Bretton Woods. In another half hour, the forest had shrunk to dwarf shrubs, and they emerged above timber line almost upon the top of Clinton. The summit, however, lay a few hundred feet to the south of them, and shut out the view in that direction. Northward, they could see for a long distance. Westward, too, they looked back at the first mountains toward Franconia. Ahead of them, they saw only a great, bare, rocky ridge rising gradually to the dome of Mount Pleasant, and to the left of this, northeastward, the sloping shoulders of the mountains beyond, falling away to the valley far beneath. Washington was hidden somewhere beyond Pleasant—still six miles away. It was nine o'clock. The
