.

The trolley whizzed them back over the same route to North Adams and
westward to Williamstown.

"One of my brothers--your great-uncle James, Ethel Brown--went to
Williams College," said Mr. Emerson, "and I shall be glad to spend the
night here and see the town and the buildings I heard him talk so much
about."

"Why don't we get out, then?"

"We're going now to Bennington, Vermont."

"Vermont! Into another state!" exclaimed Ethel Blue.

"When we come back we'll leave the car here."

"Are those the Green Mountains?" asked Dorothy as the trolley ran into
a smoother country than they had been in while traveling in the
Berkshires, but one which showed a background of long wooded ranges
rising length after length against the sky.

"Those are the Green Mountains; and this is the 'Green Mountain State,'
and the men who fought in the Revolution under Ethan Allen were the
'Green Mountain Boys'."

"But, ranged in serried order, attent on sterner noise,
Stood stalwart Ethan Allen and his 'Green Mountain Boys'
Two hundred patriots listening as with the ears of one,
To the echo of the muskets that blazed at Lexington!"

quoted Mrs. Emerson. "They were bound northward to the British fort at
Ticonderoga."

"Did they get there?"

"They took the British completely by surprise. That was in May, 1775.
It was in August, two years later that the battle of Bennington took
place."

"We'd better agree to have dinner or supper here if we don't want to
get back to Williamstown after all the food in the place has been eaten
by those hungry college boys," suggested Mrs. Emerson.

Mr. Emerson took a hasty glance at the setting sun.

"You never spoke a truer word, my dear," applauded her husband, "though
this is vacation and the boys won't be there! Still, I'm as hungry as
a bear. Let's have our evening meal, whatever it proves to be, in
Bennington."

They were all hungry enough to think the plan one of the best that
their leader had offered for some time, so it was only after what
turned out to be supper that they went back to Williamstown.

In the moonlight the towers of the college buildings glimmered
mysteriously through the trees, and the girls went to bed happy in the
promise of what the morning was going to bring them.

Ethel Brown was sorry that there were no students to be seen on the
grounds when they wandered about the next morning, for she would have
liked to see what sort of boys they were, and,