“Oh, I just took a little run into the village after breakfast, on the motor cycle.”

“You did!  To tell that Spaniard he could, or could not, go with us?”

“Oh, I didn’t see him.  I just went into the town library.  You know they’ve got a fairly decent one at Central Falls.”

“Yes, so I heard; but I didn’t suppose they’d be open so early in the morning.”

“They weren’t.  I had to wait, and I was the first customer, if you can call it that.”

“You are getting studious!” laughed Joe.  “Great Scott!  Look at what he’s reading!” he went on as he caught a glimpse of the title of the book. “‘History of the Panama Canal’ Whew!”

“It’s a mighty interesting book!” declared Blake.  “You’ll like it.”

“Perhaps—­if I read it,” said Joe, drily.

“Oh, I fancy you’ll want to read it,” went on Blake, significantly.

“Say!” cried Joe, struck with a sudden idea.  “You’ve made up your mind to go to Panama; haven’t you?”

“Well,” began his chum slowly, “I haven’t fully decided—­”

“Oh, piffle!” cried Joe with a laugh.  “Excuse my slang, but I know just how it is,” he proceeded.  “You’ve made up your mind to go, and you’re getting all the advance information you can, to spring it on me.  I know your tricks.  Well, you won’t go without me; will you?”

“You know I’d never do that,” was the answer, spoken rather more solemnly than Joe’s laughing words deserved.  “You know we promised to stick together when we came away from the farms and started in this moving picture business, and we have stuck.  I don’t want to break the combination; do you?”

“I should say not!  And if you go to Panama I go too!”

“I haven’t actually made up my mind,” went on Blake, who was, perhaps, a little more serious, and probably a deeper thinker than his chum.  “But I went over it in my mind last night, and I didn’t just see how we could refuse Mr. Hadley’s request.

“You know he started us in this business, and, only for him we might never have amounted to much.  So if he wants us to go to Panama, and get views of the giant slides, volcanic eruptions, and so on, I, for one, think we ought to go.”

“So do I—­for two!” chimed in Joe.  “But are there really volcanic eruptions down there?”

“Well, there have been, in times past, and there might be again.  Anyhow, the slides are always more or less likely to occur.  I was just reading about them in this book.

“Culebra Cut!  That’s where the really stupendous work of the Panama Canal came in.  Think of it, Joe!  Nine miles long, with an average depth of 120 feet, and at some places the sides go up 500 feet above the bed of the channel.  Why the Suez Canal is a farm ditch alongside of it!”

“Whew!” whistled Joe.  “You’re there with the facts already, Blake.”

“They’re so interesting I couldn’t help but remember them,” said Blake with a smile.  “This book has a lot in it about the big landslides.  At first they were terribly discouraging to the workers.  They practically put the French engineers, who started the Canal, out of the running, and even when the United States engineers started figuring they didn’t allow enough leeway for the Culebra slides.