"No, they're just rising from the gulfs. They'll blow off before we start, I fancy," one of the trampers said. "It's the clouds which come down, or come from the plains, which make the trouble. Come on, breakfast now! If we are going to make a side trip to the Lakes of the Clouds with you Scouts, we've got to get an early start, for our path down over the Giant's Stairs is fifteen or twenty miles long, and hard to find, in the bargain."
As they went, however, a look away from the sun showed the shadow of Washington cast over the clouds westward as far as the eye could see. Peanut waved his arm. "The shadow of that gesture was on the side of Lafayette!" he cried.
Breakfast was prepared as quickly as possible, the boys furnishing powdered eggs, the men bacon and coffee. Then, after they had paid the keeper of the coach house for their night's lodging, the combined parties shouldered packs, went back up the steps in a thin white cloud, stocked up with sweet chocolate at the Tip Top House, and still in the cloud set off southwest down the summit cone, by the Crawford Bridle Path.
The descent was rapid. The cone is a thousand feet high, but they were soon on Bigelow Lawn, and though the white mists were still coming up over the ridge from the gulfs below, they were thin here, and the sunlight flashed in, and below them they
