he advanced upon Darrin.

"Stings, does it?" inquired Dave sarcastically.

"Yes, it does," Reade retorted bluntly. "To my mind 'America'
is as sacred as any hymn ever written, and I won't hear it guyed!
That's no decent occupation for an American boy."

"That's right," nodded Greg Holmes.

"Well, I won't yield to any of you in being American to the backbone,"
Dave retorted hotly.

"Prove it," said Tom more quietly.

"I'll prove it by my whole life, if need be," Darrin went on warmly.
"Tom Reade, I'll be glad to meet you when we're sixty years old,
talk it all over and see who has been the better American through
life!"

"Great!" laughed Dick Prescott approvingly. "That'll be a fine
time to settle the question. And that time is---let me see---forty-six
years away."

The other boys were grinning now, and Dave and Tom, catching the
spirit of the thing, laughed good-humoredly.

"But this does seem a mighty long way home," Dan complained.

"I can show you fellows a shorter way, if you want it," Prescott
proposed.

"We all live on Missouri Avenue. Show us," begged Hazelton.

"It's through the woods," Dick continued. "I warn you that you'll
find some of it rough going."

"Then I don't know about it," Greg replied with fine irony. "We
fellows are not very well used to the woods."

"It's twenty minutes of six," declared Dan, glancing at his watch.
"Some of us are in danger of eating nothing but cold potatoes
tonight if we don't get over the ground faster. Find the short
cut, Dick."

"It starts down here, just a little way," Prescott answered.
"I'll turn in when we come to the right place."

Dick and Darrin were now walking side by side in advance. Right
behind them came Greg and Dan, while Tom and Harry, paired, brought
up the rear.

"In this way," called Dick, turning sharply to the left and going
in under an archway of trees. It was over velvety grass that
he led his chums at first. After something like an eighth of
a mile the Grammar School boys came to deeper woods, where they
had to thrust branches aside in making their way through the tangle.

"My Sunday suit will look like a hand-me-down by the time I get
home," muttered Greg Holmes.

"It does now," Dave called back to him consolingly.

"We suspected that Darry's grouch was due to dyspepsia," laughed
Holmes. "Now I am sure of it. David, little giant, take my
advice---fast to-night."

"I will, if the rest of you fellows will," challenged Darr