"What"s the matter--yours counterfeit?" laughed Dan.
"Say, fellows," Greg went on, "we were wishing we had the funds to build some sort of a camp. We can do it, now, can"t we?"
"What kind of camp?" inquired Lawyer Ripley, looking mildly interested.
"And for what would you use a camp?"
"Why, for camping, I suppose," confessed Greg.
"You wouldn"t live in a tent, at this time of the year, would you?"
"If we had to," a.s.sented young Holmes. "What we were talking about was building some kind of a shack in the woods somewhere."
"Rather a bad time of the year for building operations," smiled Lawyer Ripley dryly.
"But this wouldn"t be so very much of an operation, sir," urged Greg.
"Now that we"ve sixty dollars between us, we ought to be able to buy enough lumber to put up quite a shanty."
"Yes; and probably have enough money left to pay for the teaming of the lumber a few miles," agreed the man of law. "But there wouldn"t be enough to pay the carpenters."
"We might be able to build a small shack ourselves," proposed Tom Reade.
"Why, so you might," admitted the lawyer, half smiling. "However, any task that is worth doing is much better done by one used to that kind of work. When do you want to go camping?"
"Why, right after to-morrow, Christmas," replied d.i.c.k. "We could stay in the woods, if our parents let us go, until about the end of the present vacation."
"It would take you at least that length of time to build the shack, I should think," suggested the lawyer. "Until you had it built you might have to wrap up in the snow at night for your sleep. And, then, when you had it all built, you would discover that the shack didn"t belong to you, but to the owner of the land on which you built it. He could order you away from the shack if he were so disposed."
"I hadn"t thought of that," admitted Greg, looking crestfallen.
"I"m afraid we won"t camp," spoke up Harry Hazelton.
"The greatest difficulty," suggested the lawyer, "would be getting the consent of your parents to any such madcap scheme as going off into the woods to camp, day after day, in mid-winter."
"There might be some difficulty about that, sir," replied Prescott. "But now it looks as though the one really big problem would be to get a camp on the money that we now have, and to be ready to go into it in season during this school vacation."
"That would really be but a very slight difficulty," rejoined the lawyer.
"I wish I could see how you make that out, sir."
"Why, as it happens, in the property that Mrs. Dexter"s grandfather left her there"s the strip called Hobson"s woods, you know. The forest is a pretty big affair. In fact, it"s what"s generally called wild country.
But there are a thousand acres of the woods, worth about four dollars an acre, that now belong to Mrs. Dexter. She authorized me to find a buyer for that bit of the forest, but it seems to be out of the question. Now, on Mrs. Dexter"s land, in about the middle of it, and less than two hundred feet off the main trail, is one of the few real old log cabins left in this part of the United States. The cabin is in pretty good repair, too, I fancy, for Mrs. Dexter"s grandfather used to do logging out that way. Later in his life, when he had ama.s.sed money, the old gentleman used to go out to that cabin to live for a while, two or three times in every year. The place was in excellent repair when he died. It is still, I imagine."
There was a breathless silence as the lawyer ceased speaking. How the thought of that log cabin, out in the deep forest, appealed to the imaginations of such Grammar School boys as these!
"Well, sir?" asked Greg breathlessly, at last.
"Young men, if your parents should consent to your going on such a wild, madcap picnic in mid-winter, I would let you have the use of that cabin.
But you may have the use of the cabin at any other time, as long as the cabin remains in Mrs. Dexter"s name, so I would suggest your going in the spring or summer."
"Oh, pshaw!" leaped to Greg Holmes"s lips, but he choked back the exclamation. What use would boys have for a log cabin in summer, when there was a chance to use it in mid-winter? Besides, the summer seemed a long way off.
"Is there any water near the cabin, Mr. Ripley?" asked Tom Reade, who possessed a practical head in such matters.
"Yes; a spring, within perhaps twenty or thirty feet of the doorway,"
nodded the lawyer. "Inside the cabin is one of the big, old-fashioned fire-places----"
"O-o-oh! A-a-ah!" gasped the youngsters in chorus.
"There are also eight bunks in the place, each with a straw or dry-leaf mattress," continued Mr. Ripley. "There are table and chairs, hand made and of the crudest kind, and some few tools."
"Say, wouldn"t that make an ideal camp?" demanded d.i.c.k Prescott, turning to his chums, his eyes glowing.
All their faces were flushed with the excitement of the thing. Now that it was so close, and practical, all the boys of d.i.c.k & Co. felt a wild desire to be up and away for camp at once.
"And you say we may have the cabin, sir, and the right to cut some firewood in the forest?" d.i.c.k asked.
"I said you could, if you had your parents" full and free permission to go," replied Lawyer Ripley. "That, I fancy, is a very different thing."
"But if we get that permission, sir," urged d.i.c.k, "and come back and tell you so, then you will let us----"
"If you get home permission, you won"t need to come back to me at all,"
replied Lawyer Ripley, smiling, as he rose. "Just go and help yourselves to the cabin and what few improvements it contains. But I am afraid, boys, you are going to be very much disappointed if you expect that your parents will consent. I think it very unlikely that you"ll get any such permission. I will send your thanks to Mrs. Dexter, and will also tell her what I have told you about the use of the camp. As to-morrow will be Christmas, I shall not be back here to-day. If you go camping, boys--which I don"t believe you will--don"t burn the old cabin down unless you find it necessary in order to keep warm enough."
As Lawyer Ripley now made it plain that he was about to leave, the boys hastily repeated their thanks and left the office.
Not until they got down into the street did any of them feel like speaking.
"Say, fellows, if that isn"t the grandest----" suddenly blazed forth Greg.
"It"s all right," nodded Tom.
"I"m going camping, if I can get any of you fellows to go with me,"
announced Dave Darrin.
"If your folks will let you, you mean," interrupted Hazelton.
"They will," Dave contended. "And so will yours, d.i.c.k."
"I--I hope so," sighed d.i.c.k, his eyes dancing. "I never before in my life wanted to do anything as much as I now want to go camping."
"With the still woods, all snow-covered!" cried Dan enthusiastically.
"And the cold nights, with the great fire roaring up the chimney!"
supplied Greg.
"And some hunting!"
"And the jolly fun of cooking our own food!"