a dash of outside life into
his woodland solitude.

The travellers proceeded on foot through a dense forest, which, luckily
for Dol, had little undergrowth and mostly a soft carpet of moss or dry
pine needles. Still they had plenty of climbing over windfalls, with
many rough pokes and jibes from forward boughs and rotten limbs, to rob
the way of sameness. Through this labyrinth they were safely piloted by
Uncle Eb and Joe, the latter with his compass in his hand, and the
former simply studying the "Indian's compass," which is observing how
the moss grows upon the tree-trunks, there being always a greater
quantity on the side which faces north.

Before nightfall they reached another log cabin, tenanted by a man who
had just settled down for the purpose of clearing up a farm. Here they
were lodged for the night, without trouble of making camp.

The third day of their journey was marked by two sensations. They halted
for a short rest at a point where there was an extensive break in the
forest. Scarcely had they emerged from the gloom of a dense growth of
cedars, when Dol exclaimed.--

"Good gracious! That looks as if people had been building a jolly high
railroad out here."

On the right rose a bare, steep ridge of sand and gravel, nearly ninety
feet in height, and closely resembling a railway embankment.

"Well, boy," laughed Dr. Phil, "if that's a railroad, Nature built it,
and by a mighty curious process too. The sand, rocks, and gravel of
which it is mostly formed must have been swept here by a great rush of
waters that once prevailed over this land. We call the ridge a
'Horseback.' If you like, we'll climb to the top of it, after we've had
our snack [lunch], and you can get a peep at the surrounding country."

So they did. The top was level, and wide enough for two carriages to
drive abreast; and the view from it was one which could never be
forgotten. Around them were millions of acres of forest land, beautiful
with the contrasts of October; here dipping into a cedar valley, in the
midst of which they saw the silver smile of a woodland lake, there
rising into a hill crowned with towering pines, some of them over a
hundred feet in height.

But, most thrilling sight of all, they beheld, only half a dozen miles
away, rising in sublime grandeur against the sky, the mountain of
mountains in Maine,--great Katahdin. They had caught glimpses of its
curved line of peaks before. Now they saw its forests, and the rugge