“Oh, how exciting!  I wish I ever had adventures like that!”

“Don’t be silly, Dolly,” said Eleanor, severely.  “Bessie and Zara were very lucky—­they might have had a very hard time.  And you had all the adventure you need the other day when you made Bessie go off looking for ice-cream sodas with you.  You be content to go along the way you ought to and you’ll have plenty of fun without the danger of adventures.  They sound very nice, after they’re all over, but when they’re happening they’re not very pleasant.”

“That’s so,” admitted Dolly, becoming grave.

It was late in the afternoon before they reached the station at which they had to change from the main line.  There they waited for a time before the little two-car train on the branch line was ready to start Short and light as it was, that train had to be drawn by two puffing, snorting engines, for the rest of the trip was a climb, and a stiff one, since Long Lake was fairly high, up, though the train, after it passed the station nearest to the lake, would climb a good deal higher.

Even after they left the train finally, they were still some distance from their destination.

“You needn’t look at that buckboard as if you were going to ride in it, girls,” said Eleanor, laughing, as they surveyed the single vehicle that was waiting near the track.  “That’s just for the baggage.  Now you can see, maybe, why you were told you couldn’t bring many things with you.  And if that isn’t enough, wait until you see the trail!”

Soon all the baggage was stowed away on the back of the buckboard and securely tied up, and then the driver whipped up the stocky horses, and drove off, while the girls gave him the Wohelo cheer.

“But how are we going to get to Long Lake?” asked Dolly, apprehensively.

“We’re going to walk!” laughed Eleanor.  “Come on now or we won’t get there in time for supper—­and I’ll bet we’ll all have a fine appetite for supper to-night!”

Then she took the van, and led the way across a field and into the woods that grew thickly near the track.

“This isn’t the way the buckboard went!” said Dolly.

“No—­We’ll strike the road pretty soon, though,” said Eleanor.  “We save a little time by taking this trail.  In the old days there wasn’t any way to get to the lake, or to carry anything there, except by walking.  And when they built the corduroy road they couldn’t make it as short as the trail, although, wherever they could they followed the old trail.  So this is a sort of short cut.”

“What’s a corduroy road?” asked Dolly.

“Don’t you know that?  I thought you knew something about the woods, Dolly.  My, what a lot you’ve got to learn.  It’s made of logs and they’re built in woods and places where it’s hard to make a regular road, or would cost too much.  All that’s needed, you see, is to chop down trees enough to make a clear path, and then to put down the logs, close together.  It’s rough going, and no wagon with springs can be driven over it, but it’s all right for a buckboard.”