“Lucky I made a special big pudding,” grinned Jim Hornby.

“The girls may have my share,” gallantly offered Tom Reade, though he groaned under his breath.

“There’s pudding enough for a lot more people than we have here,” returned Jim.  “I don’t bother making small puddings.”

The boys were all called in quickly to greet the girls and Dr. and Mrs. Bentley.  Of course, the girls had to see the interior of the tent, and all the arrangements of the camp.

“I wish I were a boy,” sighed Laura Bentley enviously.

“I’m glad you’re not,” spoke Dick gallantly.  “You’re ever so much nicer as a girl.”

Honk! honk! sounded over by the road.  The noise continued.

“Greg,” said Dick, “that’s Miss Sharp’s father’s man.  Evidently he wants something.  You’d better run over.”

In less than five minutes back came Greg with three other men, all of them unexpected.  Mr. Alonzo Hibbert, minus his four-quart hat, and wearing a flat straw hat instead, as well as light clothes and silk negligee shirt, came in advance of Tom Colquitt, the man from Blinders’ detective agency.  Still to the rear of them was a third man, slightly bent and looking somewhat old, though there were no gray streaks in his light brown hair.

“How do you do, boys?” called Mr. Hibbert airily, as he came swiftly forward.  “We saw a big smoke over this way, and so we stopped to find out what was the matter.  Young Holmes has asked us to stop for your barbecue, but it looks to me like a terrible imposition on you, and so-----”

Here Mr. Hibbert paused, looking highly embarrassed as he caught sight of Mrs. Bentley and the girls coming out of the tent.

“You already have other company,” murmured Hibbert apologetically.  “No; most decidedly we must not intrude on you.”

“How do you do, Mr. Colquitt?” was Dr. Bentley’s greeting.  Then other introductions followed, and, ere he knew it, Hibbert and his friends were members of the party and destined to partake of the barbecue feast.

The oldish-looking man with the new arrivals proved to be Mr. Calvin Page.

“He’s the millionaire father of the missing boy that Colquitt and I are trying to find,” Hibbert explained to Dick.

“Have you any clue, as yet?” Prescott inquired.

“Nothing worth while,” sighed Lon Hibbert.

“It’s too bad,” murmured Dick.  “Mr. Page is a fine-looking man, but he must be lonely.”

“He is,” agreed Lon Hibbert.

“His wife is dead, isn’t she?”

“Yes; and Page would give the world to find that boy of his.”

“Perhaps if he doesn’t find his son it may be as well,” Dick hinted.

“Why, as well?”

“The missing son, brought up by others, might have turned out badly,” Prescott suggested.

“Pooh!” quickly rejoined Lon Hibbert.  “That missing son, no matter how wild or bad he may be, is still young enough to reform.  Prescott, no matter how bad that son may be, it will be a blessing for my friend Page to find his boy!  I pray that it may be my good fortune to run across that son, one of these days, and that I may be the first to recognize the boy.”