The girls selected as their meeting place for this occasion farmer Druckenmuller's peach orchard, to which they walked, a distance of about three miles from the home of Elizabeth Schmidt.

They left about two o'clock in the afternoon, intending to return home before nightfall, a good time being anticipated, as they took with them lunch and materials for a corn-roast.
The peach orchard in question, covering many acres, was situated at the foot of a low hill.

Between the two flowed an enchanting, fairy-like stream, the cultivated peach orchard on one side, and on the opposite side the forest-like hill, covered with an abundance of wild flowers.
When the afternoon set for the Council Fire arrived, had you happened to meet the fifteen merry, chattering girls, accompanied by two older girls, Mary and Lucy Robbins (the country school teacher), as chaperones, wending their way to the orchard, you, without a doubt, would have smiled and a question might naturally have arisen regarding their sanity.

They certainly possessed intelligent faces, but why those queer-shaped Indian dresses?
And such an awkward length for a young girl's dress! And why was their hair all worn hanging in one braid over each shoulder, with a band over the forehead?
Why so many strings of gaudy beads around their necks?
These questions may all be answered in one single sentence: The girls are dressed in Ceremonial Costume.
[Illustration: ELIZABETH SCHMIDT "LAUGHING WATER"] A great many delays along the way were caused by girls asking the names of the different wild flowers and weeds they noticed in passing.
One of the girls stopped to examine a prickly-looking plant about two feet high, with little, blue flowers growing along the stem, and asked if any one knew the name of it.

They were about to look it up in a small "Flower Guide" owned by one of the girls, when some one said: "Why, that is a weed called 'Vipers Bougloss,'" They also found cardinal flower, thorn apple, monkey flower and jewel-weed in abundance, wild sunflower, ginseng, early golden rod, "Joe-pie-weed," marshallow, black cohosh and purple loose-trifle.