how himself, fearing arrest."

"He's a strange fellow, Nat, and there is no telling what he will do. He
has been knocked around so much the last few months that I suppose he
doesn't care very much what happens next."

"I don't want to see him. I've got troubles enough without running into
Link Merwell," grumbled Nat; and then his train came in and he was off.

During their spare time the boys had studied an automobile road-map of
New York State, and especially of the Adirondack Mountains. They had
figured out that they would have good traveling nearly the whole of the
distance, although there were a few bad stretches here and there to be
covered, and also a number of mountains to be climbed.

"But the mountains won't bother us," said Dave, in reply to a question
from Luke. "Our car can go up almost any hill, and the Basswood auto is
just about as good. Of course we'll have to do some of the traveling on
low or second gear."

"The reason I asked was this," returned Luke. "A couple of years ago
some friends of mine started to tour the Adirondacks in a runabout. They
went up the side of one mountain, and then down on the other. They then
found themselves in a valley, and couldn't climb the grade on either
side. They tried for two days to get out, and then had to get a team of
horses to pull them a distance of several miles."

"We'll watch out that nothing like that happens to us," answered Dave.
"We won't go down into any hollow until we know something about how we
are going to get out of it."

As both touring-cars were large, it had been decided that Mr. and Mrs.
Basswood, as well as Dunston Porter, should accompany the young folks on
the automobile trip. As all the baggage had been packed and either
shipped forward by express or strapped on the touring-cars, it did not
take long on Monday morning to get ready to start. It was a clear and
fairly cool day, and a slight shower Sunday night had laid the dust.

"All aboard that's going!" cried Dave, gaily, when the Wadsworth car had
been run around to the front of the mansion.

He had hardly uttered the words when there came the sound of an
automobile horn from the road, and a few seconds later the Basswood car
came into sight with Ben's crowd on board.

"You'll say good-bye to us here, but we'll be at Mirror Lake before you
get there," said Mrs. Wadsworth, as she kissed her daughter and the
other girls.

"Now look out for accidents!" cautioned Dave's father.

"