“Anybody home?”

“Sure, walk right in, Toby. My latch-string is always out to my chums. I see you managed to pick up Steve on the way across; but I wager you had really to pry him loose from that dandy new volume on travel he was telling me about, because he’s such a bookworm.”

The two boys who hastened to accept this warm invitation, and enter Jack Winters’ snug “den” were his most particular chums. Those who have been lucky enough to read the preceding volume of this series^[1] will of course require no introduction to Steve Mullane and Toby Hopkins. However, as many newcomers may for the first time be making the acquaintance of the trio in these pages, it might be just as well to enumerate a few of their leading characteristics, and then we can get along with our story.

Steve was a pretty husky fellow, a bit slow about making up his mind, but firm as adamant, 2 once he had convictions. He had proved himself a wonder as a backstop in the thrilling baseball contests so lately played with Harmony, the champion team of the county. Indeed, it was due in great part to his terrific batting, and general field work that the Chester nine came out of those contests, under Jack Winters’ leadership, with such high honors.

Toby Hopkins was something of a genius in many ways, a nervous sort of a boy, and really deserving of his familiar nickname of “Hoppy” for short. All the same, he was game to the core, and would never acknowledge himself whipped as long as he could draw a decent breath. Toby ardently admired Jack, and believed there never was another such born leader as the fellow who had “placed Chester on the map” of outdoor sports.

Jack Winters had not always lived in this same town of Chester. When his folks came there from an enterprising place, he had been shocked to discover how little genuine interest the boys seemed to take in football, baseball, and all such healthy recreations.

Jack had been accustomed to enjoying everything that had a tendency to arouse a lad’s ambition to excel in all healthy exercises calculated to be of benefit to both mind and body. He soon proved to be the much-needed “cake of yeast in a pan of dough,” as Toby always declared, for he succeeded in arousing the dormant spirit of sport 3 in the Chester boys, until finally the mill town discovered that it did not pay any community to indulge in a Rip Van Winkle sleep.

And now that the seed had taken root, and Chester was fully awake, some of her most enterprising citizens were promising to take up the subject of a gymnasium and boys’ club-house, where the young lads of the town could, under the management of a physical director, have a proper place to spend their spare hours with profit to themselves.

Vacation had not as yet made any serious inroads on their summer season, and for some little time now Jack and his two best chums had been trying to figure out some scheme that would occupy a couple of weeks, and give them the outing they were hungering for.

All sorts of ideas had cropped up, but thus far nothing seemed to have caught their fancy to such an extent that their enthusiasm ran wild. It was just at this interesting stage of the game that Jack had called to the others over the ’phone, to ask them to drop in at his place that evening after supper, and hinting after a boyish fashion that he might have something “real interesting” to discuss with them.

Familiarity with Jack’s den caused both the visitors to lose no time in seating themselves in favorite seats. Steve threw himself haphazard upon an old but comfortable lounge, tossing his cap at the same time toward a rack on the 4 wall, and chuckling triumphantly when by sheer luck it stuck on a peg.

Toby curled up in the depths of a huge Morris chair that had been discarded as unworthy of a place in the living-room downstairs, and to which in due season Jack had naturally fallen heir.

“Now, we’ve strolled over this evening in response to your call, Jack,” observed Steve, with one of his wide grins, “and full to the brim with expectancy, as well as supper. Suppose you unload and tell us what you’ve struck this time?”

“Yes, spin the yarn, please, Jack, because I’m fairly quivering with suspense, you must know,” urged Toby, with a vein of entreaty in his voice.

Jack laughed. He knew that while the others were trying to appear cool, inwardly both of them were boiling with curiosity and eagerness.

“Well, the conundrum is solved, I reckon,” he went on to say; “that is, if both of you agree with me that this chance is something like a gift dropped from the blue sky. We made up our minds a long time ago that it must be some sort of outing for us this summer, and the only thing that looked dubious was the state of our funds, and they have been drained pretty low, what with buying so many things needed for our sports. Well, that part of it has been settled. A magician bobbed up just when we needed one the worst kind.”

Steve no longer reclined at full length on the lounge; he sat up straight and turned a pair of 5 dancing eyes on the speaker. As for Toby, he actually leaped out of the depths of his chair, and threatened to execute a Fiji Island war-dance on the spot.

“Go on, tell us some more, please,” urged Steve. “Who is this kind gentleman who has taken such an interest in our crowd that he’d actually offer to stand for the expense of our outing?”

“Well, in the first place,” Jack explained, “strange as you may think it, it happens that it isn’t a gentleman at all, but a lady who offers to pay for everything we’ll need, to have the greatest camping trip of our lives.”

“Re-markable!” gurgled Toby Hopkins. “Well, all I can say is that I’m more than surprised. But it’s mighty evident to me that she does this because of the admiration she feels for our chum, Jack Winters; and I guess, Steve, once more we’re lucky to have such a general favorite for a comrade.”

“Listen, fellows,” remonstrated Jack, hastily, “there are several reasons why the lady is doing this for us. One of them is admiration for the way we acquitted ourselves in the baseball games lately played. She has a healthy regard for the proper bringing up of boys, though she has never been married herself, and therefore knows them only from hearsay. She is interested in the projected gymnasium, and means to invest some of her means in the enterprise, believing that it will pay enormous dividends to the young people of 6 this community. But you mustn’t ask me for her name, because I am not at liberty to mention it even to you fellows just yet. Later on the promise of secrecy may be withdrawn, after we’ve come back from our trip.”

“Then there is another reason for her generosity besides the desire to reward a select few of the Chester nine on account of their good work on the diamond, eh, Jack?” asked Steve, persistently.

“Yes, I own up to that,” he was told, “but that’s also a secret for the present. She has made one provision which is that we are to take a quantity of pictures of the region while there, and that will certainly be an easy way of returning her kindness, especially since she stands sponsor for everything, and we are not limited to the amount of our expenses.”

“Whew! that sounds like a fairy story, Jack,” breathed Toby, entranced.

“I take it,” continued the wise Steve, “that if she wants certain pictures of the region for some reason or other, the camping country has already been settled on?”

“Yes, it has, and I hope you’ll both be pleased when I tell you we are going up into the Pontico Hills region, with a horse and covered wagon, hired from Tim Butler’s livery stable, to carry all our stuff along.”

“The very place I’ve always wanted to spend a spell in!” ejaculated Steve, exultantly. “It’s 7 surely a wild region, and a better camping place couldn’t be picked out, no matter how long you tried.”

Toby, too, seemed delighted.

“I suppose now, Jack,” he presently remarked, shrewdly, “this unknown lady friend of yours doesn’t want it known that any one is backing us in our trip?”

“That is understood,” he was informed speedily enough. “Of course our folks must know where the money comes from, but the story ends there. It is a dead secret, though later on when I’m at liberty to open my heart and tell you just what it all means, you’ll both agree with me that if the kind lady is to get what she is aiming for, no one outside ought to know a thing about her being interested in our trip.”

Of course this sort of talk aroused the curiosity of the two boys to fever pitch, but they did not attempt to “pump” Jack, knowing how useless it would be; and at the same time realizing how unfair such a proceeding would be toward their benefactress.

So they spent an hour and more in discussing the various means for making their vacation in the woods a memorable one, long to be talked of as the greatest event of the year. Long lists of needed supplies were made up, and corrected, so that by the time Steve and Toby thought it time to start homeward, they had managed to fairly map out their programme.

8“Fortunately we can hire that splendid big khaki-colored waterproof tent belonging to Whitlatch the photographer,” Jack said as the others were leaving, “and all other necessities we’ll pick up at our various homes. Goodnight, fellows, and mum is the word, remember.”