“Judging from his appearance,” suggested Tom Reade, “Rip is walking all the way to the Land of Sweet Tempers.  Probably he’s doing it on a wager, and is just beginning to realize what a long road lies ahead of him.  I wonder if he’ll, arrive at his destination during his lifetime?”

Fred’s shoes, usually so highly polished, were already thick with dust.  His collar, ordinarily stiff and immaculate, was sadly wilted and wrinkled.  His whole air was one of mingled dejection and rage.

“I wonder what can have happened to him?” asked Susie curiously.

“I think his conscience may be chasing him,” smiled Dick.

What really had happened was that Squire Ripley had been present when his son had made a very disrespectful answer to a white-haired man, one of the guests at the Lakeview House where the Ripleys were stopping.

In a great rage the lawyer had decided to send his son home for that act of gross disrespect to the aged.

To make the punishment more complete, Mr. Ripley had ordered his son to make the long journey on foot over the hills to the railway station.  Only enough money had been handed the young man to buy his railway ticket home.  The dress suit case had been added in order to make his progress more difficult.

“A young man who cannot treat the aged with proper respect must be dealt with severely,” said Lawyer Ripley to his son.  “You will reach home fagged out from your long tramp.  For your fare, until your mother and I return, you will have to depend on such food as the servants at home can spare you from their larder.  Don’t you dare order anything from the stores to be charged against me.  Now, go home, drowse out your summer in the hot town and reflect on what a mean cad you have shown yourself to be to-day.”

While Fred was thinking this all over he glanced up suddenly, to see fourteen pairs of Gridley eyes fixed upon him.  The young people, as soon as they found themselves observed, immediately turned their glances away from the sullen looking young pedestrian from their school.

“I wonder what has happened to Fred Ripley?” Susie repeated, when the object of their remark was some distance away.  “Something has gone very wrong with him.  A blind man could see that much.”

During this time Fred was thinking to himself: 

“If the guv’nor subjects me to this degradation just for one sharp answer to an old man, what would that same guv’nor do to me if he knew all the things that I’ve been engaged in up here at the lake?  What if he knew that I hired that farmer’s son to swim under the float and attach that drag to the canoe?  What would the guv’nor do if he knew that I tried to wreck Prescott’s outfit?”

Fred shivered at the mental prospect of his father’s stern, grim wrath.

But young Ripley, as sometimes happens, wasn’t caught just then.  He would go on for the present planning mean tricks against those whom he had no just reason to dislike.  Yet his time was sure to come.