“Take Mr. Welby’s boat back,” answered Snap, shortly.  “You can row, can’t you?”

“A leetle, yes.”

“Then, good-by to you,” said Shep, and leaped into the rowboat containing the camp outfit.

“Hi!  Don’t leave me here alone!” ejaculated Pop Lundy, in fresh alarm.  “Shove the boat out into the stream.”

This they did for him, and soon he was rowing away from the spot as best he could, fearful, evidently, that the negro would come, as Whopper had said, to “chew him up.”

“He’s about the limit!” was Snap’s comment, when Simon Lundy was out of hearing.  “How I would love to play ghost on him!”

“He’d have a fit and die,” added Shep.

The negro had not disarranged the boat in the least, so they were soon on their way, Shep and Giant taking the oars.  Snap leaned back in the stern and stretched himself.

“Tell you what, fellows, our outing is starting with lots of excitement.  Wonder how it is going to end?”

“Perhaps it will end very tamely,” said Whopper, who was in the bow, munching an apple.  “We’ll strike several weeks of rain, and not get a shot at anything larger than a rabbit.  Then we’ll all take cold, and have to send for a doctor, and-----”

“Say, please heave him overboard, somebody!” burst out Giant.  “He’s just as cheerful as a funeral.  We are going to have nothing but sunshine, and I am going to shoot two bears, four deer, seventeen wildcats, eighteen-----”

“Hold on!” shouted Snap.  “You have gotten into Whopper’s story-bag, Giant, and it won’t do.”

“Oh, I was fooling!” said Whopper.  “We are going to have a peach of a time.  We are going to strike an old lodge in the wood—–­some an old hermit once lived in---and find a big pot of gold under the-----”

“Bay window, near the well, just across the corner from the barber shop, next to the school,” broke in Shep.  “Say, cut out the fairy tales and get to business.  Does anybody know that it is exactly ten minutes to twelve?”

“Codfish and crullers!  You don’t say so!” came from Whopper.  “I knew I was getting hollow somewhere.  What shall we do—–­go ashore and cook dinner?”

“Might as well,” came from Snap.  “Our time’s our own, remember.  We haven’t got to hurry.”

“I know just the spot, about quarter of a mile from here,” said Shep.  “Our family once went there for a picnic.  There’s a good spring of water there and a hollow for a fire, and everything.”

“Pantry full of dishes and a tablecloth, I suppose,” broke in the irrepressible Whopper.  “I do love a picnic ground where you can pick napkins off the bushes and toothpicks, too.”

The boys pushed the rowboat on its way and soon reached the spot that Shep had mentioned, and there they tied up at a tree-root sticking out of the river bank.  Beyond was a cleared space and a semi-circle of stones with a pole in two notched posts for a fire and kettle.  They soon had a blaze started and Whopper filled the kettle at the spring and hung it to boil.