that Papa Jack
slipped into his hand; so for once the two comrades travelled side by
side. Hero sat next the window, and looked out anxiously, as the little
mountain engine toiled up the steep ascent, nearer and nearer to the top.

It was noon when they reached the hotel on the summit where they stopped
for lunch.

"How solemn it makes you feel to be up so high above all the world!" said
Lloyd, in an awed tone, as they walked around that afternoon, and took
turns looking through the great telescope, at the valley spread out like a
map below them.

"How tiny the lake looks, and the town is like a toy village! I thought
that the top of a mountain went up to a fine point like a church steeple,
and that there wouldn't be a place to stand on when you got there. Seems
that way when you look up at it from the valley. It doesn't seem possible
that it is big enough to have hotels built on it and lots and lots of room
left ovah. When the Majah said to Hero, in such a solemn way, 'Take good
care of thy little Christine, let no harm befall her this day,' I thought
maybe he wanted Hero to hold my dress in his teeth, so that I couldn't
fall off."

Mrs. Sherman laughed and Mr. Sherman said, "Do you know that you are
actually up above the clouds? What seems to be mist, rolling over the
valley down there like a dense fog, is really cloud. In a short time we
shall not be able to see through it."

"Oh, oh!" cried the Little Colonel, in astonishment. "Really, Papa Jack? I
always thought that if I could get up into the clouds I could reach out
and touch the moon and the stars. Of co'se I know bettah now, but I should
think I'd be neah enough to see them."

"No," answered her father, "that is one of the sad facts of life. No
matter how loudly we may cry for the moon, it is hung too high for us to
reach, and the 'forget-me-nots of the angels,' as Longfellow calls the
stars, are not for hands like ours to pick. But in a very little while I
think that we shall see the lightning below us. Those clouds down there
are full of rain. They may rise high enough to give us a wetting, so it
would be wise for us to hurry back to the hotel."

"It is the strangest thing that evah happened to me in all my life!" said
Lloyd a few minutes later, as they sat on the hotel piazza, watching the
storm below them. Overhead the summer sun was shining brightly, but just
below the heavy storm clouds rolled, veiling all the valley from sight.
They could see the