CHAPTER I.

PREPARATIONS.

"Have you heard from Bob? Will he come?"

"Can't tell yet. I had a letter this morning, and he writes that it's doubtful. He hasn't given up all hope, though, and says he may get on the rear platform just as the train pulls out."

"That would be just like him. He never started for chapel till all the fellows were there, or went into class-room until the recitation was just ready to begin. He never wasted a minute of his time hanging round."

"He never was late, though, in his life."

"That's all right. I know that as well as you do. I sometimes used to wish he would be late, for it made me half provoked to see him. Nothing ever seemed to put him out, and yet he'd always come in just at the last minute, as if he hadn't hurried or he somehow knew they wouldn't begin until he got there. It was just the same with his studies. There I'd be burning my midnight oil and putting in my best work, and he'd sit down for a few minutes at the table and do in half an hour what it had taken me three straight hours to work out. I never saw such a fellow."

"Yes, Bob was a great fellow."

"You don't have to remind me of that. Haven't we roomed together all through senior year? I used to think before he took up his bed and came over to room with me, that if I could only have him with me, somehow I'd catch the way he did his work, but it wasn't contagious."

"He's got, without asking for it, what my father says is the one thing he sent me to the academy for, and what he's going to send me to college to get, though I'm afraid he'll be disappointed."

"What's that?"

"Oh, it's what my father calls the power of concentrating your mind."

"Well, Bob had it for a fact. It didn't seem to make much difference to him whether there was a room full of fellows about him, or not. When he got ready to work, he just sat down to it, and you might yell in his ears or pull his chair out from under him, and it wouldn't make a bit of difference. He'd sit there on thin air and dig away until his work was all done and then look up as if he was as surprised as you please to see any one in the room. Do you know, I just envied Bob. I did for a fact. I'd give all my father's money to stand in his shoes."

"Perhaps your father would have something to say about that. But Bob was a great fellow; no mistake about that. Do you think he'll have to give up going to college with us?"

"I don't know; I hope not. His mother's a widow, you know, and since his father died, I think they've had a hard time of it. If it was any other fellow I'd say right off he couldn't go. But Bob's different, you see. He didn't have any money and couldn't do lots of the things the others did, but he was the most popular fellow in all the school, for all that. So I somehow don't give up hope that he'll go with us in the fall, after all. Everything seems to turn his way."

"Don't you believe it. It's the other way around, I'm telling you. He just turns everything his way."

"Well, I don't care how you put it if he'll only join us in the camp. I say, Jock, how did you happen to hit on this plan? It's great, that's what it is."

"Oh, I didn't hit on it at all, it was my father. You see, he spent the first vacation he's had in ten years last summer down at the Thousand Islands. We all had such a good time that we wanted to go again this summer; but he couldn't get away, and my mother wouldn't go without him, so they finally compromised on me. At first they thought they'd send me down to Alexandria Bay and Round Island to one of the hotels, and for fear that I'd get lonesome they were going to select some fine man who was well up in Latin and Greek to go along with me, just for company, you see."

"Yes, I see," laughed his companion. "They were going to get a tutor for you, were they?"

"Yes, that's what some people call it, I believe. But when I astonished the family by passing my entrance exams., they didn't know what to do, so at my own suggestion my father hired a camp on Pine Tree Island, and the result is that you and the other fellows are to benefit by my brilliant labors. You ought to be grateful; but this is a cold, cold world, and I'm not building my hopes too high. The trouble is, I _know_ you."

"Oh, we'll do the dutiful act and put in all the flourishes," said his friend, with a laugh. "But say, Jock, is it really true about the fishing and canoeing and all that sort of thing that they tell about there?"

"True? well, I should say it was! You won't need but one look at the river to make you think you've found the best spot on earth. Fishing, fishing? why, let me tell you."

"No, no! please don't. I can't bear too much, you must remember."

"Fishing?" resumed Jock, unmindful of his friend's banter, "why, one morning last summer I got up before breakfast--"

"Impossible!" interrupted his friend. "I can stand your fish stories; but that--that is too much for me."

"One morning I got up early, as I was telling you," resumed Jock.

"I believe you did make some remarks upon that subject."

"Keep still! Well, I got up before light--"

"What, what?"

"And went out with my boatman. We caught thirty of the biggest bass you ever saw--"

"Ever saw or ever expect to see," broke in his friend.

"And we were just going ashore to cook our dinner--"

"But when and where did you have breakfast? You've got ahead of your story. Tell me about the breakfast. I haven't recovered from the shock of thinking of you as being up before that was ready."

"And just before we landed, I was beginning to reel in my line. I had out about a hundred and fifty feet, when all at once--"

"What, what? Oh, don't keep me in this suspense, I can't bear it," again interrupted his irreverent friend, striking an attitude of eager attention as he spoke.

"I had a strike that almost yanked my rod out of my hand."

"Ah, yes, I see, your hook had caught on the bottom."

Jock flung a book at the head of his friend and then laughingly said: "Well, you just wait till we get into camp, that's all I can say. If you don't tell bigger stories then than I can now, it will be because language has failed you."

"I usually fail in language; my marks are apt to be below par. But I must be going now, Jock. You say the train leaves the Grand Central at nine to-night?"

"Yes. You'd better get your ticket and check your trunk early. There's likely to be a crowd at this time of the year."

"I'll be there. Got your ticket, Jock?"

"Me? Yes. I've got a pass for Bob and myself, or rather my father got one for us."

"That's the way in this world," said his friend, with mock solemnity. "Here you are the son of a railroad magnate and just rolling in lucre, and you don't have to buy a ticket like common mortals. No, you have a pass and all the conductors and porters stand off and look at you as if you were the King of Cr[oe]sus or some other thing, and we poor little sons of lawyers have to march up to the ticket-office and plank down good, hard-earned straight cash for our little pieces of pasteboards."

"You are to be pitied," replied Jock. "I heard my father say the other day the reason the railroads couldn't make any money was because the lawyers got in first, and the roads had to take what little they left."

"Did he say that?"

"Yes, for a fact."

"This moment I return to my ancestral domicile and demand of my stern parent the portion which falleth to me. He has kept his possession of such vast wealth concealed from his family. I go to make him disgorge."

"Don't forget the train leaves at nine," warned Jock. "I've got the sleeping-car tickets, or at least I've got a section and a berth. That'll be enough if Bob shouldn't come, and if he does, why, two of us will have to double up, that's all."

Jock watched his friend as he ran down the stairway, and then turned back into his own room and continued his preparations for the proposed journey. Fishing tackle was rearranged, a gun was placed carefully in its case, and many details looked after which only a light-hearted lad, eager for a new experience, knew how to provide.

And certainly Josiah Cope apparently had everything to add to his happiness. His home was one of wealth, and all that father or mother could do had been done for him. He was an eager-hearted lad, as full of good impulses as one could well be, and as he moved busily about in his room it was not difficult to understand why he was such a universal favorite among his mates. His face had that expression of frankness and good-will which somehow draws to itself all who behold it, whether they will or no; and the devotion with which his mother watched over him was, in a measure, shared by his schoolboy friends, for there was something about him which appealed to their desire to protect and shield him from ruder blasts which others might endure more readily.

Not that Jock (for so his friends had shortened the somewhat homely name which the lad was the fifth in direct descent to bear) was in the least effeminate, but his slight figure, his dark eyes and somewhat delicate features, left one with the impression that he was not over-rugged. Whatever others might think, his mother was most decidedly of that opinion, and perhaps not without reason; for she had seen his brothers and sisters enter the home only to remain for a few brief years and then go out forever, and Jock, she frequently declared, was her all. If she meant all she had left, she was correct, and certainly the love he received in his home might easily have been shared with many, and then no one would have complained of receiving too small a portion.

But Jock had somehow survived the perilous treatment and apparently was as popular among his mates as he was in his home. And unknown to him it was the loving fears of his mother that had led to the experiment of a summer camp among the Thousand Islands in the hope that the breath of the great river and the outdoor life would bring a little more color into the cheeks that were too pale for a well-grown lad of seventeen to have.

The decision once made, the next move was to select his companions. This was not a difficult problem, and soon the choicest three of his friends in the academy from which Jock had just graduated, and with whom he hoped to go up to college in the coming autumn, were invited to join him,--an invitation quickly and eagerly accepted by all save Robert Darnell, the "Bob" of the preceding conversation, and the reasons which led him to hesitate have already been referred to.

Still all hoped that the sturdy Bob, the quiet self-contained lad, the leader of his class in scholarship, and easily the best bat in school, could come from his home in the country and join them.

Albert, or "Bert," Bliss, who had been having the conversation we have already reported, was a short sturdy lad, always ready for a good time, his curly hair and laughing blue eyes causing one to laugh whenever he saw him, so irresistible was the contagion of his overflowing spirits.

The fourth member of the proposed party, Benjamin, or "Ben," Dallett, was in many ways the opposite of Albert, and in school parlance they had sometimes been known as the "Siamese twins," or "The Long and the Short of it." Certainly they were much together, and just as certainly was Ben as much too tall as his friend was too short.

All of the boys save Bob had their abode in New York and had come from homes of wealth, but in their presence Bob almost never thought of his own deprivations, or only when it was impossible for him to engage in some of the enterprises of his friends, and certain it is that the envy to which Ben had given expression, if there was such a feeling manifest among the four friends, was much more of the sterling worth and quiet powers of Bob than of the possessions of the others. At all events, they had become fast friends, and, bound together by such ties as can only be found in school and college, would be certain to have a good time if once they should be together in the camp on the selected island in the St. Lawrence River.

The evening had come, and the three boys had eagerly been watching in the great station for the arrival of their friend. As yet he had not appeared, and when the gong sounded its warning, reluctantly they grasped their various belongings and, holding their tickets in their teeth, passed through the gate and boarded their train.

"It isn't time yet," said Bert. "He won't come till the train begins to move."

"I'm afraid he isn't coming at all," replied Jock, as he arranged his various parcels in the section, all the time keeping a careful lookout for the appearance of the missing Bob in the doorway of the car.