to this, that
they laid great stress on the answer.

"Well," returned the other, soberly, "of course we couldn't make dead
certain, but after seeing the heft of that rock we believed that it was
never started by any human hands. The rain and storm must have
undermined it."

Bumpus heaved a big sigh of relief.

"Well," said he, "I'm glad of that. It's bad enough to think you're
bein' bombarded by rocks that just take a silly notion to drop when we
come along; but it'd be a heap sight worse if the men of the Big Smokies
were throwing such pebbles at us, haphazard. Whew! I'm hungry, fellers;
who says grub?"

That was just like a boy, to remember his natural appetite right on the
heels of the greatest fright of his whole life. And as the others
admitted to feeling somewhat the same way, there ensued a bustle to see
how soon supper could be gotten ready.

The members of the Silver Fox Patrol were no longer greenhorns, though
one or two of them gave evidence that they had not yet graduated from
the tenderfoot class. They had learned a great deal about the things
that are connected with a camp life, because they had spent some time
under canvas on Lake Omega, which lay not many miles from their home
town.

And then again, Thad had belonged to a troop of scouts before coming to
Cranford; while, as for Allan, he had been through the mill so often up
in Maine and elsewhere, that he was, as Bumpus declared, a "walking
edition of what to do, and what not to do when in the woods."

It is true that on this big hike through the mountains they were
compelled to travel very light, and would miss many of the things that
had added greatly to their comfort on that other occasion. But then it
was their desire to learn how to rough it, taking the knocks with the
good things.

By this time some of the lads were beginning to believe that they would
rub up against plenty of the "knocks" all right; especially if things
kept on as they had commenced since striking this wonderful "Land of the
Sky."

The supper put them in something like their customary good humor.
Indeed, as they sat around the fire afterwards, Bumpus was induced to
sing several of their school songs, so that the whole of them might join
in the rollicking chorus. Strange sounds indeed to well up out of that
valley, so lately the theater of a war between the elements, as
lightning and rain vied with each other to produce a panic in the
breasts of these same boys who n