“Well we’re going to ride over to the Gap—Eden Gap,” suggested Pemrose.

Revelation and she were, as usual, leading the way along the narrow mountain road—and beside her was Una on Revel.

“They go so well together, don’t they, mother and son?” said the latter, stroking Revel’s silky mane, “Revelation, with his coat a brighter chestnut, slighter, taller—faster—although I think Revel could hold her own in a race, too, in spite of her being so gentle—and lady-toed,” with a little laugh, “turning out her toes a little in that mincing, lady-like way. Watch her! Oh! I’m never quite so happy as when I’m on her back.”

“And you seem to be braver there than anywhere else,” thought Pemrose. “How did you ever get the courage to do it, catch Donnie by his little arms and drag him, almost, from under Cartoon’s heels,” looking silently, sidelong, at her friend, “you with all your little ‘whim-ma-garies’—foolish fears and fancies?” flicking at her horse’s neck, with a smile.

They broke into a canter, leaving the rest of the riding party behind.

“Wha-at a summer we’re having!” gasped Una next, as they reined in, to round a turn. “It—it’s the first time I’ve been with a lot of girls. And—the mountains!” She waved her riding crop.

“There—there are no words,” murmured Pemrose breathlessly. “All—all the old ones have patches on them!” She winked at her own bankruptcy, gazing up at a softly swelling mountainside, radiant in July green and silver, the silver of innumerable flashing birch trees, with a few maples thrown in—above them the dark emerald of spruce and pine.

“Look at the hardhack,” Una panted. “Isn’t it lovely? The roadside just pink—magenta! And, oh! there’s arrow head, white arrow head, wading into the water, down there.

“It’s as fond of the mud as you are—when you have the magic ring on.” It was a dark eye which winked slyly now, as Una pointed down a tangled slope that bordered, on one side, the narrow road, or bridle path, at a shallow pond, just snow-flecked with the broad-leaved arrow head. “And, oh-h! such violet asters! And, look there! purple deer grass—its heart of gold. Love-ly!”

There was a little break, a little catch in the voice of the girl whose brain was a wildflower basket.

“It—it makes everything so different, out-of-doors, when you can really identify the flowers and trees; not be, as the Guardian, says, a Mrs. Malaprop among them, going round all the time, miscalling them—or with a ‘]what-d’ye-call-’em’ on your lips.” Una laughed now—and there was a new, a wild-bird frolic in the laughter of this girl who went through life as daintily—as lovingly as if she were “picking a flower.”

“Wake up, Revel!” she said. “You’d never be a Mrs. Malaprop anywhere, would you? You’d always be a good Camp Fire Girl—you’re so knowing.”

And Revel shook her fair head and, snorting—blowing a cloud of silky breath over the compliment, as the girls, in their pretty linen riding habits, cantered onward again.

“Look! Look! Mount Mansfield off there—mighty Mount Mansfield! We’re on higher ground now—and you can just get—a peep—at it,” panted Pemrose by and by, her bare hand stroking Revelation’s neck, as they slackened pace again.

The trail was climbing, the curving mountain bridle path, broad enough, in most places, for two to ride abreast—and far away in the distance there were the cloudy outlines of the giants of the Green Mountains, Mount Mansfield—Camel’s Hump.

“And the hills to the right of us n-now!” It was an ecstatic little cry from Una, her lip-corners curving up towards the dark, curly eyelashes. “See! Two of them, just—just like big green bubbles—twin bubbles, as if they had been blown there, tossed there!”

“But the boulders!” said Pemrose, a minute or two later. “Just as if some old giant had been playing pitch-and-toss with them on the hillside! Goodness! the farmers must have a hard time.”

“That’s why I’m giving my birthday party—for them,” whispered Una, bending forward towards Revel’s silken ear. “Ha! We’re leaving the rest of the party ‘in the dust,’—far behind,” she laughed, resting her hand on the pommel, to look around. “Dorothy is riding more easily to-day, on old King—you can’t see daylight between her and the saddle,” with a quivering grin.

“And Lura can keep her balance without holding on like grim death when her horse wheels quickly round a turn,” said Pemrose, glancing back, too. “Isn’t her ‘copper nob’ wonderful when she’s riding, bare-headed—a lamp to the way?”

“There! Oh! there’s another lamp to the way. Cardinal flowers! Cardinal flowers—down by the brook, there!” Una’s quick eye caught the blaze of vermilion through the scrub. “Oh! I must get off and pick some.”

“Keep them for the Wild Flower Party—your farmers’ party—pageant—the day after to-morrow; we can ride over, again, and get some,” Pemrose argued. “It’s to-morrow that we plan to have a picnic—a supper up on the old Balcony, on our mountain, where you stand on the lip of nothing.... Mercy! What! Oh—tumbleweed! Dry tumbleweed!”

It was a big, brown pompon of the feathery weed, broken by the wind from its stem and bowling gayly down the trail.

It was Revelation shying nervously, side-stepping down the slope, his neck curved restively—his eyes trained sidelong upon that trail tumbler, as if it were a King of Terrors.

It was a girl clinging desperately with both hands to the saddle.

“Whoa! Whoa—Boy! There! There!”

Breathlessly Pem—recovering—put him on to the trail again.

“Goodness! If he didn’t take my breath away. Maybe I haven’t ridden quite as much as I thought I had!” with a little, fluttering grin. “There—there, you old Goose, look at it, so that you’ll know it again; it isn’t any different off the stem from what it is on!” She pushed the horse’s nose downward towards the great, fronded balls of the same weed growing, meek and green, beside the trail.

“Revel took no notice of it,” Una complacently patted her horse’s neck. “Well, we’ll soon be at the Gap now.”

They sighted it, a few minutes later, as they rode up the valley, a narrow, rock-girt pass between two mountains, rising precipitately on either side.

The trail, broad enough in some places to be quite a respectable piece of natural road, had shrunk now until there was scarcely room for two to ride abreast.

On the left was still the green slope, starred with wild flowers—ablaze with hardhack and broad-leaved fireweed.

To the right there was now a curving snake fence, four feet high, the boundary of some estate or farm, with ten feet of grass between it and the beaten trail.

Beyond the fence was a broader grass strip, fringed by a narrow timber belt, a screen for the rugged mountainside that rose behind it.

Ahead was the Gap, flanked by its towering peaks, with their silvery rock elbows, framing, as in a miniature, a glimpse of still loftier peaks, beyond; of rich, green bottom lands between—and over all the glory of a lamb’s wool sky, in mid-July.

“Oh! now—now, all the words have got patches on them, indeed. One can’t find any to fill the Gap with!” Una laughed. “But there! Oh! look there.” She rose in her saddle so suddenly, so wildly, that even Revel resented it, shook her fair head protestingly.

“Above—above the Gap! Right over it! Against—the sky!” she cried. “That—silver—speck, tumbling speck, what is it?” And now the thong of her riding crop, frantically waving, seemed, from afar, to loop the speck.

“I believe—I believe it’s an aËroplane! AËroplane doing stunts up there! A—a thousand feet above the Gap!” Pemrose’s heart was stunt-flying too. “Oh-h! now. See there! Turning somersaults! Flying upside down. Maybe it’s Treff! He’s dare-devil—enough.”

Just as the “zooming” bats had wheeled and turned somersaults against the black and blue night-sky, on the girls’ first night out, so this jolly air king was having his free frolic in the sun’s eye, cutting all sorts of festive capers, or flitting, a radiant dragon fly, from peak to peak, above the hills.

It gave the crowning touch to the landscape—and skyscape. For it was Life: Life joyous, dominant—devil-may-care.

“Look! Look, girls! Oh, look!” Una pointed him out to those behind. “Stunt-flying—an aviator! Isn’t that gr-reat?... I guess it is Treff—that ‘nickum’ cousin of mine—and his new ‘bus.’ Oh, I hope he isn’t going to have any more fiery ‘notes’ to-day!”

“I’ll engage that’s who—it is.” The color was flooding Pemrose’s cheek. “When I got his ‘radio’ a few nights ago—radio message—he said something about ‘hopping’ over here for your birthday the day after to-morrow—and the Flower Fuss, as he calls the party. Ha! There he goes now, dropping down—dropping down, a few hundred feet!”

“He’s flying in our direction—no, down towards the horse-farm,” said Una. “Probably he means to stay there, for a few days. Hear—his purr! Whew!” She turned suddenly a little pale. “If he comes nearer the horses won’t like it.”

The familiar buzz of the aËroplane was, now, only five hundred feet above the trail. The solitary air king was flying southward, along the route by which the girls had come—but down in the direction of the farm.

Suddenly, however, he seemed seized with a fancy for reconnoitering the wild hillside screened by the narrow birch belt, on the other side of the bridle path from that on which he had been winging!

Abruptly he wheeled. As abruptly—as mischievously—he “zoomed” down—until he was only fifty or sixty feet above the trail.

Well! if he was tired of playing mountebank to such lukewarm spectators as the hills, he had lively enough witnesses now.

Every horse was suddenly jumping sidelong—madly—down the slope; those that weren’t backing, crab-fashion, with a frantic show of hind-legs.

Even Revel shied—demoralized.

But all this—all this was too tame for Revelation.

He had saluted tumbleweed by taking to the slope. He greeted an aviator by taking the fence.

Together with the others he had swerved to the left of the trail—and a few feet down that grassy slope—but there he turned and in mad bounds made for the fence upon the right.

The girl upon him felt as if her head and shoulders were being dragged backward—the rest of her going with the horse.

She had never taken a four-foot fence before—or come anywhere near it.

But there was a mischievous boy, up there, who did stunt-flying a thousand feet up.

She set her teeth. Never once did she grip the saddle. Reuniting her body by an inner jerk, as it were, she rose to the leap—and waved her hand to the aviator as she went over.

“Well! by gracious, that girl is an all-round winner,” chuckled the boy in the sky, as he penitently pulled his “joy-stick” towards him and soared again in a great hurry.

Her head back upon her shoulders again, as it seemed, Revelation’s rider galloped him a little way, wheeled him and with a lift of the reins, saucily high, put him at the fence again, bounded back on to the trail—into the scattered group of girls and horses.

“Awfully—awfully sorry to have stampeded the outfit!” It was a boy-aviator advancing, three minutes later, with a merry mixture of East and West upon his tongue.

“So—so you ought to be!” stormed Pemrose, her cheeks blazing. “Didn’t you—you see the riding party—recognize us?”

“Didn’t recognize you until after I had ‘zoomed’ down—and then it was too late,” confessed the daredevil. “I wasn’t paying attention to the riding party. I was stealing a march on somebody else.”

“On who—whom?”

“Merciful—green—hop-toads!” The boy threw up his hands, invoking every hop-toad in the grass. “Oh! the funniest little figure it was, over there on the hill, just back of the trees. I had been spying on her, from aloft, through the glasses. She was standing, still as a stump, upon the mountainside, an umbrella held behind, not over, her—and I caught the flash of something bright, steely, upon her head.”

“Head-phone,” murmured Pemrose. “No doubt she had something bright on her heel, too, and that in a wet spot!”

“Radio bug! I said to myself. So the wilderness has ’em, too!” The brown speck winked. “By—by flying low, as I did, across the trail, up the hill, I might have got a peep into the umbrella—just for fun!”

“Just for fun—you played a nice trick on us,” sniffed Pemrose.

“I didn’t see into the umbrella, but I saw her face to face, after I had flown off to a distance and made a landing. She had mounted her horse then. And by Jove”—the boy’s chest heaved under his khaki; he flicked the helmet-strings dangling, about his ears—“by Jove! she was the strangest... Ha! there she goes now—climbing the trail.”

It was a pathetic little figure upon which all eyes were now turned; the sunlight on it seemed almost heartless as it rode slowly up the mountainside, with the umbrella in the stirrup strap—the something bright upon the heel.

Pemrose’s grip tightened convulsively upon her rein—as when she had taken the leap.

It was the same figure that she had seen before in a woodland aisle, with the piercing eyes—keen and brilliant, but lonely, drifting.

“The Little Lone Lady!” she breathed to herself.

Treff’s gaze looked softened, too. He tapped his forehead under the aviator’s helmet significantly.

“You’re a radio bug, all right—what else you may be, I don’t know—but, all the same, there’s where you’re wanting, Sister!” he said.