uld do without your pleasure for our sakes. But this is
a case where your going camping will be worth more to us all than
anything else that five dollars would buy. Besides, think how
disappointed your friends would be over not having their leader."

"I appreciate your mother's feelings so much, lad," went on Mr.
Prescott, "that I forbid you to spend your remaining money on anything
for your mother. She has had her greatest happiness in knowing that you
spent half of the first considerable sum of money you ever had in buying
something for her. That is as far as you can go. Illness alone
preventing, Dick, you'll go camping, and you'll pay your full share into
the camping fund. Besides, I'm glad to say that the indications are that
a much better business year is coming, and that probably we'll soon be
able to have all the things within reason that we may want."

So Christmas, if it ran rather shy on presents in the Prescott
household, was at least a season of extremely good feeling among three
people whose sympathies ran staunchly together.

"The fellows will be waiting to see me," laughed Dick after breakfast.
"So, if I haven't anything to show 'em, at least I've got something to
tell them that will make their hair stand up. And I wonder if Mr. Fits
visited any of their homes last night?"

Laughing, though doubtless he felt quite unlike it, Dick Prescott put on
coat and hat and went out into the Gridley streets.

CHAPTER V

DICK TRIES STRATEGY

"Hey! Hear about Dick Prescott?"

"What?"

"His Christmas got 'pinched'!"

"No!"

"Sure."

Rapidly indeed did the news travel about. Dick told it to his own chums
first. The news "leaked" and traveled up and down the streets as Gridley
boys began to come forth to compare their Christmas experiences.

Just as certainly, too, the news didn't lose any on its rounds. By the
time that the yarn had been carried to the further end of Main Street,
Dick's holiday losses had mounted up to a total of: A gold watch and
chain, a diamond stickpin, a twenty dollar gold piece, a suit of
clothes, silver plated racing skates, a camera, a cornet and a host of
lesser articles.

"Whee! The Prescotts must have been making money this year," commented
Ben Alvord, when he heard the long list of presents named.

"Say," proposed Dave Darrin indignantly, "we'll hike all over Gridley
and just see if we can't run into Mr. Fits somewhere. If we find him
we'll jump him all together, a