period, and had met defeat but three times in the four years.

Athletics, at this school, were not overdone, but were carried
on with a fine insistence and a dogged determination. Up to date,
however, despite the fine work of their boys, the citizens of
the town had been somewhat grudging about affording money for
training athletic teams. What the boys had won on the fields
of sport they had accomplished more without public encouragement
than with it.

It was now October. Dick Prescott and his five closest friends
were all freshmen. They had been in the school only long enough
to become accustomed to the routine of work and study. They were
still freshmen, and would be until the close of the school year.
As freshmen were rather despised "cubs" Dick and his friends
would be daring, indeed should they dare to do anything, in their
freshman year, to make them very prominent.

According to a good many Gridley people Dick's father, Eben Prescott,
was accounted the best educated man in town. The elder Prescott
had taken high honors at college; he had afterwards graduated
in law, and, for a while, had tried to build up a practice. Eben
Prescott was not lazy, but he was a student, much given to dreaming.
He had finally been driven to opening a small bookstore. Here,
when not waiting on customers, he could read. Dick's mother had
proved the life of the little business. Had it not been for her
energy and judgment the pair would have found it difficult to
rear even their one child properly. The family lived in five
rooms over the bookstore.

From the time he first began to go to school it had been plain
that Dick Prescott inherited his mother's energy, plus some of
his own. He had been one of the leaders in study, work and mischief,
at the Central Grammar School. It was while in the grammar school
that a band of boys had been formed who were popularly known as
"Dick & Co." Dick was naturally the head. The other members of
the company were Tom Reade, Dan Dalzell, Harry Hazelton, Greg
Holmes and Dave Darrin. These were the same now all High School
freshmen who had stepped forward and offered to take Dick's place
in fighting Fred Ripley.

Dick was now fourteen, and so were all his partners, except Tom
Reade, who was a year older. All of Dick's chums were boys belonging
to families of average means. This is but another way of saying
that, as a usual thing, Dick and all his partners would have been
unable to