sively neat, then," laughed Tom.
"As for me, I enjoy my old clothes, and that is one of the reasons
why I'm having so much fun out of this trip. I don't have to
dress up!"

"You'd feel first rate if you could be dressed up for a few hours,
go into a hotel dining room, have a good meal and then slip into
a ballroom for a dance," laughed Prescott.

"Bosh!" flared Tom. "I'm no dandy, and all I want is to be a
man."

"How do you stand, Harry?" grinned Dave Darrin. "Do you agree
with Tom that dirt is the best stuff with which to decorate one's
clothing?"

"I never said that," broke in Tom hotly. "I'm as ready for a
bath and clean clothing as any of you. I like to wear old
clothes---not soiled ones!"

"If anyone happens to overhear us talking," laughed Hazy, "he'll
think that we're all planning to take up prize fighting as our
work in life."

"I don't like to hear the officers of the Army and Navy scoffed
at as a lot of idling, time-wasting dandies," Darry asserted.

"And I don't like to be accused of liking dirt on my clothes,
just because I am going to be a civil engineer," Tom explained
in a milder voice.

An ideal bit of green forest, at the edge of a limpid lake, appealed
to Dick & Co. as the noon stopping place.

"I've a good mind to fish," remarked Danny Grin.

"Go ahead, if you want to," Dick assented, "but we've got a lot
of fresh meat that we simply must cook this noon, for it may not
keep until night."

"It would take you an hour or more, even though the fish bit readily,
to catch enough fish to feed this little multitude," Tom remarked.

"I don't want to wait that long for my meal to-day."

"I don't believe I want to wait, either," Dalzell agreed, and
gave up the idea of fishing.

Luncheon went on in record time that morning. It was not later
than half-past eleven o'clock when they sat down to the meal,
and but a few minutes past noon when the dishes were stacked up,
ready to be washed.

"Whizz-zz!" whistled Dave, as the sounds made by a swiftly driven
automobile reached their ears. "Someone is hurrying to get his
noon meal. Just hear that old spurt wagon throb!"

The boys sat some hundred feet in from the highway. The automobile
did not interest them much until-----

Bang!

Then the car stopped with a scraping sound.

"Gracious!" exclaimed Danny Grin, jumping up at the sound of the
explosion. Then he sat down once more, looking sheepish.

"Give up the Annapolis bee, Danny