ause they
wanted to search some more--or Pemrose did.

So he sat on a bench outside the little mountain house, thirty-six
hundred feet above sea-level, where there were no visitors at this early
season, with the exception of the experimenting party, and, between
whiffs of his pipe, discoursed upon the folly of simple earth folk in
"ganging beyant themselves, thinking o' clacking wi' the Man in the
Moon, forbye"--and, in tones seemingly bewitched, of the black shape he
had seen jump forth from the woods.

"Pshaw! I do believe you think that it was some bad fairy,
Andrew,--fairy or mountain 'deev', who stole the little record, and part
of the parachute, too--spirited them away," said Una, with fanciful
relish, having not quite grown beyond the fairy-tale age, herself.

"If that's so, girlie," said the mountain landlady--alas! for Andrew
True-penny, alias Campbell, now came the evil chance over which he
sulked--"if that's so, and you could only find the mountain
wishing-stone, stand on it and wish three times--wish har-rd--maybe, the
good fairies would give you back what you're looking for!"

"Where--where is it--the wishing-stone?" The little fixed star in Una's
eye was never so bright--a twinkling star of portent. "The wishing stone
on Greylock! Oh! I never knew there _was_ one."

"Havers, woman! Dinna ye ken that ye hae a tongue to hold?" muttered the
grizzled chauffeur, in a stern aside.

But the motherly New Englander--who, with her old husband, could not for
a moment be suspected of the theft--had her heart full for two sorrowing
girls.

"Why! it's a little over a mile from here, I guess, down the Man Killer
trail, the third flat slab you come to. I'd go with you myself--though
it's rough traveling, the steepest trail on the mountain--only my man is
laid up with the rheumatiz, hangin' on to him like a puppy-dog to a
root."

"Oh! we can find it for ourselves--hurrah!" shouted Una, almost
squinting with anticipation. "I've never stood upon a real mountain
wishing-stone before. Who--who knows what may come of it?"

In her young blood, as in Andrew's, was the extravagant excitement of
the whole experiment,--this first step in the ladder of demonstration
which was by and by to reach the moon--lending to all an unearthly
touch.

"The--the Man Killer trail! Why! that's _one_ place where we
haven't searched--yet!" A moping Pemrose suddenly awoke.

To her, who had grown up amid the mathematical realities of an