“Awful!  Awful!  I never want to see any of it,” answered Ricks, with a decided shake of his head.

“If it goes off it’s apt to blow everything to splinters,” went on Dick.

“That’s so —­ I don’t want any of it,” and the old man began to gather up more waste paper for his fire.  Watching his chance, Torn threw one of the firecrackers into the blaze and then rejoined his brothers.

With a handful of paper Ricks again approached the blaze.  He was standing almost over it when the firecracker went off, making a tremendous report and scattering the light blazing paper in all directions.

“Help!  I’m killed!” yelled old Ricks, as he fell upon his back.  “Get me away from here!  There’s dynamite in this fire!” And he rolled over, leapt to his feet, and ran off like a madman.

“Don’t be alarmed —­ it was only a firecracker,” called out Tom, loud enough for all standing around to bear, and then he ran for the train, which had just come in.  Soon he and his brothers were on board and off, leaving poor Ricks to be heartily laughed at by those who had observed his sudden terror.  It was many a day before the cranky station master heard the last of his dynamite.

The boys were to ride from Oak Run to Ithaca, and there take a small steamer which ran from that city to the head of the lake, stopping at Cedarville, the nearest village to Putnam Hall.  At Cedarville one of the Hall conveyances was to meet them, to transfer both them and their baggage to the institution.

The run to Ithaca proved uneventful although the boys did not tire of looking out of the window at the beautiful panorama rushing past them.  At noon they had lunch in the dining car, a spread that Sam declared was about as good as a regular dinner.  Three o’clock in the afternoon found them at the steamboat landing, waiting for the Golden Star to take them up to Cedarville.

“Fred Garrison, by all that’s lucky!” burst out Tom suddenly, as he rushed up to a youth of about his own age who sat on a trunk eating an apple.

“Tom Rover!  Where are you bound?”

“To a boarding school called Putnam Hall.”

“You don’t say!  Why, I am going there myself,” and now Fred Garrison nearly wrung off Tom’s hand.

“If this isn’t the most glorious news yet!” burst in Dick.  “Why, Larry Colby is going too!”

“I know it.  But he won’t come until tomorrow.”

“And Frank Harrington is going too.”

“He is there, already —­he wrote about it day before yesterday.  That makes six of us New York, boys.”

“The metropolitan sextet,” chirped in Sam.

“Boys, we ought to form a league to stand by each other through thick or thin.”

“I’m with you on that,” answered Fred.  “As we are all newcomers, it’s likely the old scholars will want to haze us, or, something like that.”

“Just let them try it on!” cried Tom.  “Yes, we must stick together by all means.”  And the compact, so far as it concerned the Rover boys and Fred Garrison, was made on the spot.  Later on Larry Colby and Frank Harrington joined them gladly.