The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path | Page 2

warm beds those days, since farmers had a habit of getting rid of their produce at dawn, and driving off home while most schoolboys were indulging in their last nap.
But, by various means, they had learned just where the nuts grew most plentifully that season; and quite a list of available places had been tabulated: to the Guernsey Woods for blacks; plenty of shagbarks, and some shellbarks to be gathered over at the old Morton Place, where no one had lived these seven years now; and they said the chestnuts away up in that region miles beyond the mill-pond was bearing a record crop this season, as if to make amends for lean years a-plenty.
Scranton was one of the few places where the boys still yearned after a goodly supply of freshly gathered nuts to carry them through a long and severe winter. Somehow they vied with one another in the gathering of the harvest of the woods, and often these outings yielded considerable sport, besides being profitable to the nutters. On one momentous occasion the boys had even discovered the hive of a colony of wild bees, cut the tree down, fought the enraged denizens by means of smoke and fire, and eventually carried home a wonderful stock of dearly earned honey that would make the buckwheat cakes taste all the sweeter that winter because of the multitude of swellings it cost the proud possessors.
Hugh had been coaxed to join the party; not that he did not fully enjoy such enterprises, but he had laid out another programme for that afternoon. All through the morning these same lads had been hard at work on the open field where Scranton played her baseball games, and had such other gatherings as high-school fellows are addicted. Here a fine new cinder path had been laid around the grounds, forming an oval that measured just an eighth of a mile, to a fraction.
All through the livelong day on Saturdays, and in the afternoons during weekdays, boys in strange-looking running costumes of various designs could be seen diligently practicing at all manner of stunts, from sprinting, leaping hurdles, engaging in the high jump, with the aid of poles; throwing the hammer; and, in fact, every conceivable exercise that would be apt to come under the head of a genuine athletic tournament.
For, to tell the secret without any evasion, that was just what Scranton designed to have inside of another week--a monster affair that included entries from all other schools in the county, and which already promised to be one of the greatest and most successful meets ever held.
Hugh and his chums were every one of them entered for several events; indeed, it would have been like looking for a needle in a haystack to try and find a single Scranton boy above the age of ten, and sound of wind, who had not taken advantage of the generous invitation to place his name on the records, and go in for training along a certain line. Those who could not sprint, leap the bars, throw hammer or discus, or do any other of the ordinary stunts, might, at least, have some chance of winning a prize in the climbing of the greased pole, the catching of the greased pig, the running of the obstacle race, or testing their ability to hop in the three-legged race, where each couple of boys would have a right and left leg bound together, and then attempt to cross a given line ahead of all like competitors.
So even when they started out after lunch the whole five were a bit tired; and a vast store of nuts, like the one they were fetching home, cannot be gathered, no matter however plentiful they may be on ground and trees, without considerable muscular effort on the part of the ambitious collectors.
Consequently, every fellow was feeling pretty stiff and sore about the time we overtake them on the way home. Besides, most of them had zigzag scratches on face and hands by which to remember the wonderfully successful expedition for several days. Then there was Julius Hobson with a soiled handkerchief bound around his left thumb, which he solicitously examined every little while. He had, somehow, managed to catch a frisky little squirrel, which, wishing to take home, he had imprisoned in one of his side pockets that had a flap; but, desirous of fondling the furry little object, he had incautiously inserted his bare hand once too often; for its long teeth, so useful for nut-cracking, went almost through his thumb, and gave his such an electric shock that in the confusion the frightened animal managed to escape once more to its native wilds.
Hugh, as he went along toward home, was really taking mental notes concerning the lay of the land, and