“Anyway,” Tom insisted, “Teall isn’t likely to bother us any more.”

“Either he’ll quit on the funny talk,” agreed Prescott, “or else he’ll go to the other extreme and be more tantalizing than ever.”

It would greatly have interested these Central Grammar boys had they known that the subject of their conversation was even then listening to them.  Ted Teall, sore and angry, had come away from town all by himself.  He wanted a long swim in the pond, to see if that would cool off the anger that consumed him.

Hearing voices as he came through the woods, Ted halted first, then, crawling along the ground, made his way cautiously forward.  And now the captain of the South Grammar nine lay flat, his head hidden behind a clump of low bushes.

“Having fun over me, are they?” growled Ted.

“It was a rough trick to play, of course,” laughed Dick.  “But I felt so wholly certain Ted’s fellows would start in to break us up that I felt I had to spring that torpedo trick in order to shut the other crowd up in advance.”

“Oh, you did, did you?” thought Teall angrily.

“But now there’s something else to be thought of,” Prescott went on.  “Teall is bound to feel sore and ashamed, and he won’t rest until be has done his best to get even with us.”

“Teall had better leave us alone,” replied Tom, shaking his head.  “Ted’s brain isn’t any too heavy, and he’ll never be equal to getting the better of a crowd with a Dick Prescott in it.”

“We won’t do any bragging just yet,” Prescott proposed.

“That’s right.  You’d better not,” Ted growled under his breath.

“Fellows,” announced Dan Dalzell, “I’ve made an important discovery.”

“I wonder if he saw me?” flashed through Teall’s mind, as he tried to lie flatter than before.

“Name the discovery,” begged Hazelton.

“Look at your watches, fellows,” Dan continued, “and I think you’ll find that it’s now proper time for us to go in swimming.”

“So it is,” Darrin agreed.  “Hurrah!”

Little more was said for a few moments.  All the fellows of Dick & Co. were busy in getting their clothing off.

“Say, but I hope you fellows get far enough away from your duds!” breathed Teall vengefully, as he watched through the screen of leaves.

“Do you fellows think we had better leave a guard over our clothes?” queried Dick, as they stood forth, ready for swimming.

“Not!” returned Dalzell with emphasis.  “If I agreed to it, it would be just my luck to have the lot fall to me.  For the next half hour I don’t want to do a thing but feel the water around me all the way up to my neck.”

“What’s the use of a guard over our clothes?” queried Dave.  “There isn’t another soul besides ourselves in these woods this afternoon.”

“Go on thinking that!” chuckled Teall.

Running out on a log and putting his hands together, Dick dived.