The High School Boys in Summer Camp | Page 9

accepted it."
"I didn't," smiled Dick. "Mr. Eades finally offered eighty, and I told
him I regretted that we hadn't done the trading at the time that he came
over to Gridley to see the canoe. Mr. Eades replied that at the time he
came here he wasn't authorized to speak for his friends, but merely to
look at the canoe and report. After that he made one or two more small
increases in his price, but I seemed to have lost interest in the subject of
a trade and looked at my time table to see when the next train left for
Gridley. Then we talked about other matters, and, fellows, I was pretty
glum, though I didn't allow the fact to show. Finally, he offered me
more money, and then a little more. At last I came down on my price,
and made him my final offer. Mr. Eades didn't seem to like it, and then,
all of a sudden, he took out his check book and wrote a check for me."
"Close to a hundred dollars?" asked Dave, with deep interest.
For answer Dick threw the check on the table. There was a wild
scramble for it.
"A hundred and fifty dollars!" gasped Tom Reade.
"Let me see that check!" demanded Greg Holmes unbelievingly.
The check went from hand to hand, each of the fellows looking at it
half bewildered. Yet certainly the check said one hundred and fifty
dollars.
"See here, Dick," asked Tom anxiously, "are you sure---positive, that
is---that it was honest to charge a hundred and fifty for that canoe of
ours?"
"You may be sure that I thought of that," Prescott answered. "I don't
want to defraud any man. But birch bark suitable for canoes is getting
to be a thing of the past in this country. Our friend, Hiram Driggs, the
boat builder, told me that a birch bark canoe, nowadays, is simply
worth all one can get for it. But, after Mr. Eades had written the check
and handed it to me, he said: 'Now, the trade is made and closed,

Prescott, what do you really consider the canoe worth?' I answered him
a good deal as I've answered you, and offered to return the check if Mr.
Eades wasn't satisfied. Fellows, for just a moment or two my heart was
in my mouth for fear he'd take me up and ask for the return of his check.
But Mr. Eades merely smiled, and said he was satisfied if I was."
"I'll bet he'd have gone to a two hundred dollar price," declared
Hazelton. "Dick, weren't you sorry, afterwards, that you didn't hold out
flat for two hundred dollars?"
"Not I," young Prescott answered promptly. "If I had been too greedy
I'd have deserved to lose altogether, and very likely I would have lost.
Fellows, I think we can be well satisfied with the price we've obtained."
"I am!" declared Dave Darrin promptly. "We've realized a hundred
dollars above my wildest dream."
Incidentally it may be mentioned that Mr. Eades found, from his
friends, that he had a prize, indeed, in the fine old war canoe. The
grounds committee of another country club offered two hundred and
fifty for that same canoe a month later.
"Now, fellows," Dick went on, "suppose we leave here and decide how
we're to lay out this money for our summer camp?"
The vote was carried instantly. With a whoop of glee the chums started
for Dave's house.

CHAPTER III
THE HUMAN MYSTERY OF THE WOODS
"Now, get to work!" shouted Dick Prescott. "Destruction to all
shirkers!"
"Please may I beg off for five minutes?" begged Danny Grin, raising
one hand.

"Why?" queried Prescott sharply.
"I want to take that much time to convince myself that it's all true,"
replied Danny.
"You'll know that it's all true when you wake up to-morrow morning,"
laughed Dick. "But it won't look half as real if any fellow shirks any
part of his work now. All ready, fellows?"
"Ready!" came the chorus.
"Tom Reade will make the best foreman, won't he?" appealed Prescott.
"Tom has a knack for just such jobs as this, and it's going to be a tough
one."
The boys stood in the middle of a half acre clearing in the deep woods,
five miles past the town of Porter. Here the woods extended for miles
in every direction. As these young campers glanced about them it
seemed as though they possessed a wealth of camping material---far
more than they had ever dreamed of owning.
The tent, twelve feet by twenty, and eleven feet high at the ridgepole,
with six-foot walls, was their greatest single treasure. It had cost
thirty-five dollars, and had been bought from the nearest large city.
"We'll get the tent up first," called