during the trouble in camp.

"We've lost so much time this morning that we'll have to hustle
for the rest of the day," Tom called down from the wagon seat,
as he started the horse.

An hour later they were more than three miles past Fenton.

"Get out of the way, Tom!" called Dave. "Drive up into someone's
yard like lightning. Here comes a whizz wagon that wants the
whole highway."

Behind them, its metal trimmings flashing in the sun, and leaving
a trail of dust in its wake, came an automobile traveling at least
sixty miles an hour.

Yet, fast as the car was going when it passed them, the speed
did not prevent one occupant from recognizing them and calling
out derisively. Then, half a mile ahead, the car stopped, turned,
and came slowly back toward the wondering Gridley boys.

CHAPTER XXIV

CONCLUSION

Five rather contemptuous pairs of youthful eyes surveyed Dick
& Co. as their outfit plodded on its way.

"Aren't they a mucker looking outfit?" demanded one voice from
the car.

Then the automobile shot ahead again.

"Phin Drayne! Humph!" said Darry rather scornfully.

Phin Drayne is no stranger to the readers of the "_High School
Boys Series_," who will recall Phin as the "kicker" who, at the
game on the Thanksgiving before, had sulked and refused to go
on the field, hoping to induce the other members of the Gridley
High School gridiron team to coax him to play. Thus Dick, though
suffering at that time from injuries, and forbidden to play, had
been forced out onto the field to help win the great game of the
season. Of course a kicker like Drayne did not like Prescott.
Dick worried but little on that account.

"There! they are coming back," Greg announced. "They are grinning
at us again."

"If they keep on grinning," threatened Darry, "we'll sic Danny
Grin onto them. When it comes to grinning our own Danny boy can
grin down anything on earth."

As if to verify that claim, Dalzell began to grin broadly. Besides
this, he turned his face toward the occupants of the automobile
as it once more passed Dick & Co.

Just at this point the car slowed down. Phin Drayne looked as
though he were exhibiting his fellow students of Gridley High
School as so many laughable freaks.

"That's what I call a vacation on the cheap," Drayne remarked
to his friends, in a tone wholly audible to Dick & Co.

"It is 'on the cheap,'" Dick called out pleasantly. "And yet,
our trip hasn't been such a very