“I understand why your father objects, Harry,” broke in Darrin.  “With five drowning accidents from canoes hereabouts, already this summer, and two of those accidents on our own river, your father has some right to be nervous about the canoe.”

“I can swim,” argued Harry.

“So could both of the fellows who were drowned right here in the river,” rejoined Reade.  “Harry, I don’t blame either your father or Dan’s mother for objecting.  Anyway, think of the fun we’re going to have, this summer, of a different kind.”

“If we sell the canoe,” Darrin laughed.  “But we haven’t sold it yet.”

“Oh, Dick can get something for the canoe,” insisted Reade.

“Yes; but ‘something’ won’t fill the bill, now, for you all heard Dick say he wouldn’t take less than ninety dollars for it.  When Dick says a thing like that he means it.  He will bring back ninety dollars, or-----”

“Or nothing,” finished Dave.  “Somehow, I can’t just figure out what any man would look like who’d give ninety dollars for an old second-hand war canoe, even if it is of Indian model.”

“And made of genuine birch bark, which is so hard to get these days,” added Reade.  “Fellows, I can’t believe that our old Dick will come back whipped.  Defeat isn’t a habit of his, you know.”

So the “Co.” of Dick & Co. wandered up on to Main Street, a prey to suspense.  Some hours must pass ere they could hope to know the result of their young leader’s mission at Porthampton.

All the member of Dick & Co. are assuredly familiar enough our readers.  These six young Americans, Gridleyites, amateur athletes and high school boys, were first introduced to the reader during their eventful days of early chumship at the Central Grammar School.  Their adventures have been related in detail in the “Grammar School Boys Series.”  How they made their start in athletics, as grammar school boys, and, more important still, how they made their beginnings in character forming, have all been related in that series.  We next came upon Dick & Co. in the “High School Boys Series.”  All of our readers recall the rousing story of “The High School Freshmen.”  Young Prescott and his chums were bound to be “different,” even as freshmen; so, without being in the least “fresh,” they managed to make their influence felt in Gridley High School during their first year there.  Though, as freshmen, they were not allowed to take part in athletics, they contrived to “boost up” Gridley High School athletics several notches, and aided in putting the Athletic Association on a firmer basis than it had ever known before.  They did several other noteworthy things in their freshman year, all of which are now wholly familiar to our readers.  Their doings in the second high school year are fully chronicled in “The High School Pitcher.”  In this second volume the formal and exciting entry of Dick & Co. into high school athletics is splendidly described, with a wealth of rousing adventure and humorous situations.