At that moment a distant church clock struck twelve, and then a rooster crowed.

“H’m! guess it is time I got to sleep!” grunted Billy, as he tumbled into bed, put out his light and was soon fast asleep.

In the morning when he and young Smith arose, the latter said to him in some surprise: 

“Why, Billy, what is the matter, what have you been doing?  You have got the blackest eye I ever saw on a boy.”

“Me?” cried Billy.  “Are you sure?  Isn’t it dirt?  Where should I have been to get a black eye?”

“I am sure I don’t know, but that’s what it is all right.  Look at it yourself, Billy, and see if it is not.”

There was a little looking glass in the tent, and Billy now surveyed himself in this, finding that young Smith was right, and that he did have one beautiful black eye, the other being only slightly discolored.

He knew where he had obtained it, but did not think it necessary to explain the matter to young Smith.

“I’ll wait and see who has the most to say about it,” he thought, “and then I will know who it was that I followed last night, who it was that gave me this lovely decoration.”

When he met the boys, however, all of them had something to say, and Harry said with a laugh: 

“You must have got that when you stumbled over the tent rope last night, Billy.”

“Yes, I guess I did,” said Billy, but to himself he remarked that now there was very little chance of learning the truth.

CHAPTER XV

FUN ON THE RIVER

That day a number of the boys from the camp down the river came up on the invitation of the Hilltop boys to pay them a visit, and to compete for various prizes offered by the doctor, and some of the people of the neighborhood who had gone to the other camp on the occasion of the regatta.

“Some of our boys took away prizes from you the other day,” said Percival who received the visitors, “and it is only fair that we should give you a chance to capture something from us.”

“We won’t from you or Sheldon,” replied one of the visitors, “but we will try to compete with the rest of your boys.  There is no use trying to beat you, however.”

“You won’t if you don’t try, at any rate,” said Dick.  “We are glad to see you, at any rate, and we will endeavor to make you enjoy yourselves.”

Percival arranged a program, and at the suggestion of the leader of the visitors, although he would have liked not to do so, included Herring in an exhibition of swimming, and a match with four or five others, boys from both camps.

There was a three-legged race between Billy Manners and Seymour as one set of three legs, and two of the Rocky Hill boys as the other, which caused considerable amusement.

Billy’s left leg was strapped to his partner’s right so that they had really to run out of step in order to keep step, which seemed a paradox, but it was really the only way in which they could get along at all.