“Where is Jonas, all this time?” said Rollo to Lucy.
Lucy said that he had been busy, a long time, doing something over
beyond some rocks, but she did not know what, for her father told her
she must not go to see. Rollo wondered what the secret was, and he was
just going to ask his father to let him go and see what Jonas was
doing, when they saw him coming out from the bushes. He came up to
Rollo’s father, and told him that it was all ready. Then Rollo’s father
called to all the company, and told them it was time to stop gathering
berries, and they might take up their baskets and follow him.
The baskets and pails were heavy and full, and the whole party walked
along, carrying them carefully towards the place where Jonas had come
from. Rollo’s Hither led the way. They entered into a little thicket,
and passed through it by a narrow path. They came out presently into a
sort of opening, on a brow of the mountain. On one side they could look
down upon a vast extent of country, exhibiting a beautiful variety of
forests, rivers, villages, and farms. On the other side was a rocky
precipice, rising abruptly to a considerable height, and then sloping
off towards the summit of the mountain. They walked along a few steps
on a smooth surface of the rock, between patches of grass and
blueberry-bushes, until Lucy and Rollo ran forward to a brook which
came foaming down the precipice, and then, after tumbling along over
rocks a little way, took another foaming leap down the mountain, and
was lost among the trees below.
The party all stepped carefully over this brook, and then walked along
up the bank on the opposite side until they came to the precipice. Here
they were surprised and pleased to see a large bower built, in front of
a little sort of cavern or recess in the rock. Jonas had built it of
large limbs of trees and bushes, which he had leaned up against the
rock, in such a manner as to enclose a large space within. There was an
opening left round on the farther side, next the rock, and they all
went round mid went in—Rollo first, then Lucy, then the others. They
found that smooth and clean logs and stones were arranged around the
sides of the bower; and in the middle, on a carpet of leaves, was very
abundant provision for a rustic dinner.
There was bread, and butter, and ham, and gingerbread, and pie, and
glasses for water from the brook. Rollo and Lucy wondered how all those
things could have got up the mountain. Presently, however, they
recollected that, when they were coming up, Jonas had two covered
baskets to bring, and they thought, at the time, that they seemed to be
heavy.
Thus the day passed away, and towards evening they came down the
mountain. Some remarkable things happened when they were coming down,
which will be related in the story called “TROUBLE ON THE MOUNTAIN.”