“Tyndall is a brick to let us off,” sighed Tom gratefully, as he sank down once more.

Later on Dick & Co. emerged from the tent, started a fire, and had supper, though they did not pay great attention to the meal.

“I wouldn’t want to race every day,” grunted Reade, as he squatted near the fire after supper.

“If we did,” Dick retorted, “we’d speedily get over these aches and this stiffness.”

For an hour or so the boys remained about the fire.  Dan Dalzell was the first to slip away to his blankets.  Hazelton followed.  Then the movement became general.  Soon all were sound asleep.

Nor did any sounds reach or disturb them for hours.  Not one of the sleepers stirred enough to know that the sky gradually became overcast and that there was a distant rumbling of thunder.

Hardly had the campfire burned down into the general blackness of the night when an automobile runabout, moving slowly and silently, stole along the roadway.

In it sat the son of Squire Ripley.  Fred, having brooded for hours over the failure of his scheme to make Dick & Co. lose the canoe race, had at last decided to pay a stealthy, nocturnal visit to the camp of the boys he disliked, with the express purpose of doing whatever mischief his hands might find to do.

His father’s family car and automobile runabout were both at the hotel garage, and at his disposal.  Soon Fred Ripley was speeding away over the country road in the automobile runabout.

As he neared the camp he extinguished the running lights, then went on slowly so as to make no noise.  At last he stopped the car.

Gr-r-r-r! came out of the darkness.  Faithful Towser was still at his post.  He came forward slowly, suspiciously out of the darkness.  He may have recognized his enemy, for Towser came close to the car, showing his teeth in an ugly fashion.

Fred lost no time in starting his car forward.  “I wish that pup would have the nerve to get in front of the car,” he muttered as he drove slowly away from the camp.  “What fun it would be to run over the brute!  I don’t dare to get out of the car while he’s on guard.  I forgot about him for the time being, though goodness knows I’ve cause to remember him.”

Towser uttered one or two farewell growls.  Two hundred yards further on Fred let out the speed in earnest, at the same time switching on the electric running lights.

“I’ll come back late to-night,” Fred reflected.  “I’ll leave the machine a little way down the road, and come up here on foot.  In the meantime I’ll think of some scheme to get square with Dick Prescott and his crowd.  I’ll hunt up a good stout club, too, and then if that confounded dog is troublesome I’ll settle him.”

For an hour or more Fred ran the car at random over one country road after another.

“I wonder if that pup ever goes to sleep,” he muttered.  “I’d really like to know.  If I’m going back that way to-night I’d better be turning about, for there is a bad storm coming.”