“Sixty-five dollars, anyway,” urged Dan Dalzell, otherwise known as “Danny Grin.”

“What’s your own idea, Dick?” asked Tom Reade, as the distant whistle sounded.

“If you fellows are going to be content with a sixty or seventy-dollar bottom price,” suggested Prescott, “I wish you’d elect someone else to go in my place.”

“Do you think we’ll have to take fifty?” asked Tom Reade looking aghast.

“If you send me, and leave the trade in my hands,” retorted young Prescott, “then you’ll have to accept ninety dollars as the very bottom price, or there won’t be any sale.”

“Hurrah!” chuckled Danny Grin.  “That’s the talk!  Ninety—–­or nothing!”

“Do you think you can get that much?” asked Dave doubtingly.

“I’ll have to, or I won’t make any trade,” Dick smiled, though there was a glint of firmness in his eyes.

“Let it be ninety dollars or nothing, then,” agreed Tom Reade, adding, under his breath, “With the accept on the ‘nothing.’”

As Dick glanced about him at the faces of his chums they all nodded their approval.

“I have my final instructions, then,” Dick announced, as the east-bound train rolled in at the Gridley station.  It had been from the westbound train, a few minutes before, that the stranger seeking Mr. Hibbert had alighted.

“Wish you luck, old chap!” cheered Dave, as Dick ascended the carsteps.

“I wish us all luck,” Dick called back from the car platform, “and I’ll try to bring it back to you.”

The train was moving as Dick entered one of the day coaches.  Silently his chums wished that they might all have gone with Dick, instead of turning away from the station, as they were now doing.  Funds were low with Dick & Co., however, and all hands had contributed to buy young Prescott’s round-trip ticket to Porthampton, more than an hour’s ride away.

“Do you believe Dick can get ninety dollars for the canoe?” asked Dave at last, when the high school boys were half way to Main Street.

“Why not?  It’s a six-paddle war canoe, a genuine one, and in good condition for the water,” Tom Reade replied.

“But it’s only a second-hand canoe,” Darrin argued.  “It was second-hand when we bought it at the Wild West auction a year ago.”

“That canoe is in just as good order as it ever was,” Greg maintained.  “It’s a shame for us to sell it at all.  We could have had a lot of fun with it this summer.”

“Yes,” sighed Danny Grin, “if only Harry and I hadn’t been forbidden by our parents to have anything more to do with the canoe.”

“One thing is certain,” spoke up Tom promptly.  “With two of our fellows barred from entering the canoe we couldn’t have any fun.  Dick & Co. have always pulled together, you know.  There are six of us, but we don’t break up into smaller parties, and we don’t recruit our ranks with newcomers.”

“I don’t see why my father had to kick so about the canoe,” sighed Harry Hazelton.  “We enjoyed the good old canoe all last summer, and not one of us got hurt in it, or from it.”