“It’s twenty minutes of six,” declared Dan, glancing at his watch.  “Some of us are in danger of eating nothing but cold potatoes tonight if we don’t get over the ground faster.  Find the short cut, Dick.”

“It starts down here, just a little way,” Prescott answered.  “I’ll turn in when we come to the right place.”

Dick and Darrin were now walking side by side in advance.  Right behind them came Greg and Dan, while Tom and Harry, paired, brought up the rear.

“In this way,” called Dick, turning sharply to the left and going in under an archway of trees.  It was over velvety grass that he led his chums at first.  After something like an eighth of a mile the Grammar School boys came to deeper woods, where they had to thrust branches aside in making their way through the tangle.

“My Sunday suit will look like a hand-me-down by the time I get home,” muttered Greg Holmes.

“It does now,” Dave called back to him consolingly.

“We suspected that Darry’s grouch was due to dyspepsia,” laughed Holmes.  “Now I am sure of it.  David, little giant, take my advice—–­fast to-night.”

“I will, if the rest of you fellows will,” challenged Darrin quickly.

“The truth is out,” Tom burst out laughing.  “Darry, by that slip of the tongue you admitted that you’ve been eating too much and that you’re all out of sorts.”

Dave did not deny.  He merely snorted, from which sign of defiance his chums could gain no information.

They had gone another quarter of a mile through the woods when Dick, now alone in the lead, suddenly halted, holding up one hand as a signal to halt, while he rested the fingers of his other hand over his lips as a command for silence.

“What is it?” whispered Darrin, stepping close.

“Fred Ripley, Bert Dodge and some of their fellows,” Dick whispered, at the same time pointing through the leaves.

“Well, we don’t have to halt, just because they’re around,” retorted Darrin, snorting.  “If they try to pick any trouble with us we can give ’em as good as they send.  We’ve done it once or twice already.”

“But we don’t want to go to fighting on Sunday, if there’s any way to avoid it,” young Prescott urged, at which four of his chums nodded their heads approvingly.

“I’m not looking for any fight, either,” muttered Dave.  “Yet it goes against the grain to halt just in order to let that gang slip by without seeing us.”

“There are five of us against your single vote, Darry,” Dick reminded him.  “Let us have our way.”

“Well, we don’t need to skulk, do we?” queried Dave.

“Oh, no,” Dick assured him.  “All we will do is to keep quiet and not bring on a fight with that tough lot.”

“Huh!” muttered Darrin, as though he could not see the difference between that and skulking.

Presently, after holding a hand behind him to signal silence and stealth, Prescott started on in the lead.  He wanted, if possible, to see just where Ripley, Dodge and their crowd went, so that the Grammar School boys would not run too suddenly into them.  The “Co.” trailed on in Indian file behind their leader.