hy, where are the boys?" he demanded. "I left them here."

"Gone, like all good angels, when their work is done," smiled
his wife.

"It's all right, anyway, girls," Tom Drake answered cheerily.
"We're pretty sure to find 'em up in the village, where we're
going."

In the first place that the Drakes entered they came upon Dick
and his three friends. The Gridley boys, after dodging a crowd
that wanted to lionize young Prescott, had taken refuge, unseen,
in the back of an otherwise deserted ice cream saloon.

"There they are!" cried Mollie, running the length of the shop,
as fast as her chubby little legs could take her. She ran straight
to Dick who bent over to give her a gentle hug.

"I don't know what to say to you young men," cried Mrs. Drake,
halting beside the boys, her voice breaking a little, her eyes
moist.

"Then, if you'll permit me to offer a suggestion," Dick smiled
back, as he rose, "it seems to me that conversation might spoil
several good things. Won't you all sit down and be our guests
in a little ice cream feast that we have started?"

It was almost an hour before the little party broke up. A few
interested citizens, however, found the hiding place of the Gridley
High School boys and insisted on coming in to shake hands with
the boys.

"Take your family and slip out through the back door," Dick whispered
to Tom Drake.

"I don't know that I'll ever see you again," murmured Drake huskily,
"so I want to say-----"

"Don't say anything," Dick smiled back. "You're all right, from
now on. And we've all learned something to-night. We'll let
it rest there. Good-bye, and the best of good luck for you and
yours."

So the Drakes escaped from what would have been an embarrassing
scene. Nor were Dick and his friends long in getting away from
the too-enthusiastic citizens.

"It's late enough for us to go back to camp and turn in, isn't
it?" suggested Tom Reade.

"I was thinking of that myself," Dick admitted.

"You must be tired, anyway," Dave hinted. "You whipped Miller
all right, but he was a tiring brute, and I'll wager that you're
both sore and exhausted."

"I'll plead guilty to a little bit of both," Dick Prescott assented,
laughing at the recollection of Miller at the time when that brute's
second eye was closed.

Yet it was more than half an hour after their return to camp when
slumber finally began to assert its claim upon the Gridley boys.
For Greg and Harry, as soon as they h