“What do you want of willow switches, John?” asked Mrs. Harding.

“Going to make whistles out of them,” he said, cutting several which sprouted out from the edge of a spring.  “Besides they’re good things to keep the flies from biting the tonneau.  Smith runs so slow that they are stealing a ride.”

“Defend me,” I said to my employer.

“Jacques Henri is doing as he is told,” declared Miss Harding.

The spring was so inviting that we sampled its clear, cold water.  Harding in the meantime whittling industriously on his willow switch.  When he found that his whistle would “blow” he was as pleased as if he had designed a new type of locomotive.

A mile farther on we passed sedately through a country village and aroused the fleeting interest of the loungers in front of the combined post-office and news store.  Then we entered a fine farming country, and from it plunged into a forest so dense that the overhanging boughs almost spanned our pathway.

Moss-covered stone walls lined both sides of the road.  Everywhere was a profusion of wild flowers, their petals brushing against our tires, and their flaunting reds, yellows, and blues brightening the gloom of the encompassing wood.  A gray squirrel scampered across our path and impudent chipmunks chattered to right and left.  And then we came to a small clearing filled with the wagons, tents and litter of a gipsy camp.

“Let’s stop and have our fortunes told!” cried Miss Dangerfield, but my employer vetoed that proposition.  It was a vivid flash of colour.  The brightly painted wagons with their canvas tops, the red-shirted men, black of hair and eyes, olive of skin, and graceful in their laziness; the older women bare-headed, bent of shoulder, and brilliantly shrouded in shawls; the younger women straight as arrows, bold and keen of glance, and decked in ribbons and jewelry, and on every hand swarms of gipsy children, more or less clothed.  The blue smoke of their camp-fires twisted through the dark green of the fir trees in the background.

Again the forest closed upon us.  The grade became steeper, and in places our road had been blasted through solid rock.  And then we reached the summit of this ridge, and like a flash the superb panorama of the Hudson burst upon us.  At our feet lay the broad bosom of the Tappan Zee, its waters glistening in the sunlight, the spires of a village in the foreground, and the distance blue-girt with cliffs, hills, and mountains.

I have seen it a thousand times, but it is ever new.

“Stop; Jacques Henri!” commanded Miss Harding, and I stopped.

“What’s the matter?” asked Harding.  “Something busted?”

“We’re going to sit right here a minute or more and admire this,” declared Miss Harding.

“Great; isn’t it?” admitted Harding.  “Who owns it, Smith?  Does it cost anything to look at it?”

“Not a penny,” I said.