hering squall.

"Come on, mates," he urged, with a sulky growl, "let's get out
of here. These young fellows want their place all to themselves.
They're just like all of the capitalistic class that are ruining
the country to-day! Things in this country are coming to a pass
where there's nothing for the fellow who-----"

"Who won't work hard enough to get the place in the world that
he wants," Tom Reade finished for the tramp, as he ushered the
three of them through the doorway.

CHAPTER XVIII

DICK PRESCOTT, KNIGHT ERRANT

That day of enforced tie-up was followed by three days of hard
hiking. The Gridley High School boys showed the fine effects
of their two vigorous, strenuous outings. Each had taken on weight
slightly, though there was no superfluous flesh on any of the
six. They were bronzed, comparatively lean-looking, trim and
hard. Their muscles were at the finest degree of excellence.

"We set out to get ourselves as hard as nails," remarked Dave,
as the boys bathed in a secluded bit of woodland through which
a creek flowed. It was, the morning of their fourth day of renewed
hiking. After the swim and breakfast that was to follow, there
were twenty miles of rural roads to be covered before the evening
camp was pitched.

"I guess we've won all we set out to get, haven't we?" inquired
Reade, squaring his broad shoulders with an air of pride. "I
feel equal to anything that a fellow of my size and years could
do."

"I think, without boasting, we may consider ourselves the six
most valuable candidates for Gridley High School football this
year," Prescott declared. "We ought to be the best men for the
team; we've worked hard to get ourselves in the pink of physical
condition."

"I wouldn't care to be any stronger than I am," laughed Danny
Grin. "If I were any stronger folks would be saying that I ought
to go to work."

"You will have to go to work within another year," Dick laughed,
"whatever that work may be. But you must work with your brain,
Danny boy, if you're to get any real place in life. Your muscles
are intended only as a sign that your body is going to be equal
to all the demands that your brain may make on that body."

"If my mental ability were equal to my physical strength I wouldn't
have to work at all," grinned Dalzell.

Splash! His dive carried him under the surface of the water.
Presently he came up, blowing, then swimming with strong strokes.

"Danny boy seems t