“And will steal it from the farmers, at that,” added Susie teasingly.

“Yes, you will!” mocked Danny Grin good-humoredly.

“I give you our word that we’ll steal everything that we bring in the garden line,” Susie declared vigorously.

“Then you’ll arrange it with the farmer in advance,” Greg laughed.

“I give you our word that we won’t do that, either,” laughed Laura, coming to her friend’s support, though she had no idea what was passing in Susie’s busy little head.

“There goes the luncheon bell!” cried Dick reproachfully.  “We’re keeping you girls away from your meal.  Come on, fellows.  Into the canoe with you.”

“But you’ll be back here to-morrow morning?” pressed Miss Bentley.

“Yes; at what time?”

“Ten o’clock.”

“You’ll find us here punctually.”

Dick & Co. paddled back to their camp feeling that they were having a most jolly time, with all the real fun yet to come.

Dick did not think it worth while to go over to the hotel again that day, to see if a telegram had come.  He was certain that the letter would not find Mr. Howgate earlier than the next day, in any event.

But at ten o’clock the next morning Dick & Co., having put the best possible aspect on their attire, paddled gently in alongside the float of the Hotel Pleasant.

Even before they had landed, Fred Ripley, who was stopping with his father and mother at the Lakeview House, alighted from an automobile runabout in the woods some two hundred yards from the lakeside camp of Dick & Co.

“Those muckers are away,” Fred told himself, as he watched the war canoe go in at the hotel float.  “Now, if I have half as much ingenuity as I sometimes think I have, I believe I can cut short their stay here by rendering that cheap crowd homeless—–­and foodless!”

CHAPTER XIII

THE RIPLEY HEIR TRIES COAXING

Fred studied the now distant canoe, then glanced carefully about the camp.

He knew that any sign of his presence, observed by Dick & Co., would be sure to result in the swift return of the canoe, with its load of six indignant boys.

Nor did young Ripley dare to risk discovery as the perpetrator of the outrage he was now planning.  He feared his father’s certain wrath.

“There are screens of bushes behind which I can operate,” Ripley decided.  “I am glad of the bushes, for, if I use care, not a living soul can see me.  Now, for some swift work.”

It did not take Ripley long to discover where the boys’ food supply was stored.

“These fellows act like boobs!” muttered Fred in disgust.  “Here they go away and leave everything exposed.  If they didn’t have an enemy in the world, even then some tramp could come along and clean out the camp.  Humph!  Two tramps, if they wanted to work for a little while, could carry away all the food there is here.  What a lot of poor, penniless muckers Prescott and his friends are!”