The Major waved his hand toward her, saying, “Go, Hero.  Guard her well and bring her back safely.  The dear little Christine!” The name was uttered almost in a whisper.

With a quick, short bark, Hero started after the Little Colonel, staying so closely by her side that they entered the train together before the guard could protest.  If he could have resisted the appealing look in the Little Colonel’s eyes as she threw an arm protectingly around Hero’s neck, he could not find it in his heart to refuse the silver that Papa Jack slipped into his hand; so for once the two comrades travelled side by side.  Hero sat next the window, and looked out anxiously, as the little mountain engine toiled up the steep ascent, nearer and nearer to the top.

It was noon when they reached the hotel on the summit where they stopped for lunch.

“How solemn it makes you feel to be up so high above all the world!” said Lloyd, in an awed tone, as they walked around that afternoon, and took turns looking through the great telescope, at the valley spread out like a map below them.

“How tiny the lake looks, and the town is like a toy village!  I thought that the top of a mountain went up to a fine point like a church steeple, and that there wouldn’t be a place to stand on when you got there.  Seems that way when you look up at it from the valley.  It doesn’t seem possible that it is big enough to have hotels built on it and lots and lots of room left ovah.  When the Majah said to Hero, in such a solemn way, ’Take good care of thy little Christine, let no harm befall her this day,’ I thought maybe he wanted Hero to hold my dress in his teeth, so that I couldn’t fall off.”

Mrs. Sherman laughed and Mr. Sherman said, “Do you know that you are actually up above the clouds?  What seems to be mist, rolling over the valley down there like a dense fog, is really cloud.  In a short time we shall not be able to see through it.”

“Oh, oh!” cried the Little Colonel, in astonishment.  “Really, Papa Jack?  I always thought that if I could get up into the clouds I could reach out and touch the moon and the stars.  Of co’se I know bettah now, but I should think I’d be neah enough to see them.”

“No,” answered her father, “that is one of the sad facts of life.  No matter how loudly we may cry for the moon, it is hung too high for us to reach, and the ‘forget-me-nots of the angels,’ as Longfellow calls the stars, are not for hands like ours to pick.  But in a very little while I think that we shall see the lightning below us.  Those clouds down there are full of rain.  They may rise high enough to give us a wetting, so it would be wise for us to hurry back to the hotel.”

“It is the strangest thing that evah happened to me in all my life!” said Lloyd a few minutes later, as they sat on the hotel piazza, watching the storm below them.  Overhead the summer sun was shining brightly, but just below the heavy storm clouds rolled, veiling all the valley from sight.  They could see the forked tongues of lightning darting back and forth far below them, and hear the heavy rumble of thunder.