The High School Boys Training Hike | Page 7

Pills
or the Sarsaparilla. Holmesy, I want to save your face for you with this
crowd."
"Will you keep quiet, for a moment, and let the other fellows hear, even
if you have to take a walk in order to save your own ears?" demanded
Greg, with sarcasm. "This piece is about Dick Prescott, and he doesn't
sign patent medicine test-----"
"Dick Prescott?" demanded Darrin. "Whoop! Let's have it!"
"It isn't a roast, is it?" demanded Danny Grin solemnly.
"No; it isn't," Greg went on. "Listen, while I read the headlines."
It was a four-line heading, beginning with "Dick Prescott's Fine
Nerve."
"There! I was afraid it was a roast, after all," sighed Danny Grin.
"Take that fellow away and muzzle him," ordered Greg, then proceeded
to read the other sections of the headlines.
By this time Greg had a very attentive audience. Even Tom Reade had
ceased to scoff.
"Oh, bosh!" gasped Dick, when Greg was about one third of the way
through the column article.
"Isn't it true?" demanded Dave.
"After a fashion," Dick admitted.
"Then hold off and be good while the rest of us hear about yesterday's
doings."
So Dick stood by, his face growing redder and redder as the reading
proceeded.

"That's what I call a dandy story," declared Greg as he finished reading.
"Dick, why didn't you tell us something about it last night?" demanded
Hazelton.
"What was the use?" asked Prescott. "And, though I've always thought
the 'Blade' a fine local newspaper, I don't quite approve of Mr.
Pollock's judgment of news values in this instance. I suspect that Mr.
Pollock must have been away, and that Mr. Bradley, the news editor,
ran this in."
"It sounds like some of Len Spencer's stuff," guessed Dave. "He's great
on local events."
"If they had to print the yarn, eight or ten lines would have covered it,"
Dick declared. "Fellows, we've used up eighteen minutes for our halt,
instead of ten. Come on!"
Greg, however, after rising, and before starting, was careful to fold the
"Blade" neatly and to tuck it away in a pocket. He meant to save that
news story.
All of our readers are familiar with the lives and doings of Dick
Prescott and his friends up to date.
"Dick & Co.," as the boys styled their unorganized club of chums, was
made up of the six boys, who had been fast friends back in their days of
study at the Central Grammar School of Gridley.
They had been together in everything, and notably so in athletics and
sports. All that befell them in their later days at Central Grammar
School is told fully in the four volumes of the "Grammar School Boys
Series."
Yet it was when these same boys entered Gridley High School that they
came into the fullest measure of their local fame and popularity. Even
as freshmen they found a chance to accomplish far more for school
athletics than is usually permitted to freshmen. It was due to their

efforts that athletics were put on a sound financial basis in the Gridley
High School. All this and more is described in the first volume of the
"High School Boys Series," entitled "The High School Freshmen."
But it was in the second volume of that series, "The High School
Pitcher," that our readers found Dick & Co. entered fully in the training
squads of one of the most famous of American high schools. As
described in the third volume, "The High School Left End," Dick & Co.
were transferred from the baseball nine to the gridiron eleven, and by
this time had become the undisputed athletic leaders of Gridley High
School. These honors they had not won without tremendous opposition,
especially by the formation of the notorious "Sorehead Squad" to
oppose their hard earned supremacy in football. Yet Dick & Co. ever
went strenuously forward, in manly, clean-cut fashion, working
unceasingly for the furthering of honest American sport. Between the
plottings of their enemies and a host of adventures on all sides, the
school life of Dick & Co. proved exciting indeed.
In the "High School Boys' Vacation Series" our readers have followed
the summer doings of Dick & Co. as distinguished from the doings of
their crowded school years. The first volume devoted to the vacations
of Dick & Co., "The High School Boys' Canoe Club," describes the
adventures of our lads in an Indian war canoe which even their slender
financial resources enabled them to buy at an auction sale of the effects
of a stranded Wild West Show. In the second volume of this series,
"The High School Boys In Summer Camp," our readers came upon an
even more exciting narrative of keenly enjoyed summer doings, replete
with lively adventures. In that volume the activities of Tag Mosher,