“And now, ho, for the rolling river!” cried Sam.  “Say, I’m just crazy to begin that trip on the houseboat.”

“So am I,” came from both of his brothers.  But they might not have been so anxious had they dreamed of the many adventures and perils in store for them.

CHAPTER II

ON THE WAY TO PUTNAM HALL

“Boys, we start the march back to Putnam Hall in fifteen minutes!”

Such was the news which flew around the camp not long after the dinner hour had passed.  Already the tents had been taken down, the baggage strapped, and six big wagons fairly groaned with the loads of goods to be taken back to the military institution.

The cadets had marched to the camp by one route and were to return to the academy by another.  All was bustle and excitement, for in spite of the general order a few things had gone astray.

“Weally, this is most—­ah—­remarkable, don’t you know,” came from that aristocratic cadet named William Philander Tubbs.

“What’s remarkable, Tublets?” asked Tom, who was near by, putting away a pair of blankets.

“Lieutenant Rover, how many times must I—­ah—­tell you not to address me as Tublets?” sighed the fashionable young cadet.

“Oh, all right, Tubhouse, it shan’t occur again, upon my honor.”

“Tubhouse!  Oh, Rover, please let up!”

“What’s wrong, Billy?”

“That is better, but it is bad enough,” sighed William Philander.  “I’ve—­ah—­lost one of my walking shoes.”

“Perhaps, being a walking shoe, it walked off.”

“Maybe it got in that beefsteak we had this morning,” put in Sam, with a wink.  “I thought that steak was rather tough.”

“Shoo yourself with such a joke, Sam,” came from Fred Garrison.

“Have you really lost your shoe, Tubby, dear?” sang out Songbird Powell, the so-styled “poet” of the academy.  And then he started to sing: 

“Rub a dub dub! 
One shoe on the Tubb! 
  Where can the other one be? 
Look in your bunk
And look in your trunk,
  And look in the bumble-bee tree!”

“Whoop! hurrah!  Songbird has composed another ode in Washtub’s honor,” sang out Fred Garrison.  “Washtub, you ought to give Songbird a dollar for that.”

“Thanks, but I make not my odes for filthy lucre,” same from Powell, tragically, and then he continued: 

“One penny reward,
And a big tin sword,
  To whoever finds the shoe. 
Come one at a time,
And form in line,
  And raise a hullabaloo!”

And then a shout went up that could be heard all over the encampment.

“I’ll lend you a slipper, Tubbs,” said little Harry Moss, whose shoes were several sizes smaller than those of the aristocratic cadet.

“Somebody get me a shingle and I’ll cut Tubstand a sandal with my jackknife,” came from Tom.

“I’ll shingle you!” roared William Philander Tubbs, and rushed away to escape his tormentors.  In the end he found another shoe, but it was not the one he wanted, for that had been rolled up in the blankets by Tom and was not returned until Putnam Hall was reached.