“Oh, they are fine, Master Richard,” said Snuggers.  “Nothing finer on the lake shore.  Captain Putnam’s one recreation is to drive behind a fast team.”

“Is it?  I wish he would take me out with him some time.”

“Always drives alone.  Reckon it kind of quiets him, after a noisy time with the boy.”

“I suppose.”

They were soon on the way, which led out of Cedarville and over a hill fronting the lake.

“By the way, do you know where the farms belonging to Mr. Stanhope and to Mr. Laning are located?” asked Tom, when they were well out of the village.

“Mr. Stanhope, sir?  There isn’t any Mr. Stanhope.  He died two years ago.  That place you see away over yonder is Mrs. Stanhope’s farm.”

“She has a daughter Dora?”

“Yes,” Peleg Snuggers paused for a moment.  “They say the widder thinks of marrying again.”

“Is that so!” put in Dick, and then he wondered if Dora would be pleased with her stepfather.  “So that is the place?”

“Yes, sir; two hundred and fifty acres, and the fittest dairy in these parts.  If, the widder marries again, her husband will fall into a very good thing.  The dairy company at Ithaca once offered fifty thousand dollars for the cattle and land.”

“Gracious!” came from Tom.  “We’ve been chumming with an heiress.  Are the Lanings rich, too?”

“Very well to do.  That is their place, that side road.  Here is where we turn off to get to the Hall.  Captain Putnam had this road made when the Hall was first built.”

The road was one of cracked stone, as smooth as a huge iron roller could make it.  They bowled along at a rapid rate, under the wide spreading branches of two rows of stately maples.  They were close to the lake, and occasional glimpses of water could be caught through the tree branches.

“It is certainly a splendid locality for a boarding academy,” was Dick’s comment.  “My, what pure air —­ enough to make a sick boy strong!  Do you have much sickness at the Hall?”

“Very little, sir.  The captain does not let a cast of sickness stand, but calls in Dr. Fremley at once.”

“That is where he is level-headed,” said Fred.  “My father said I was to call for a doctor the minute I felt at all sick.”

They were now approaching Putnam Hall, but there was still another turn to make.  As they swept around this, they came upon a tramp, half asleep under a tree.  The tramp roused up at the sounds of carriage wheels and looked first at the driver of the carryall and then at the four boys.

“Phew!” he ejaculated, and lost no time in diving out of sight into some brush back of the row of maples.

“Hullo, who was that?” cried Sam.

“A tramp, I reckon,” answered the utility man.  “We are bothered a good deal with them.”

“Begging at the Hall for the left-overs?”

“Exactly.  The captain is too kind-hearted.  He ought to drive ’em all away,” answered Peleg Snuggers; and then the carryall passed on.