Toward five o’clock they came in sight of Ashbury.  A few minutes later they had reached a point where the highway turned into one of the streets of the town.

Here a uniformed bell-boy from the Ashbury Terraces Hotel approached them.

“Is Mr. Prescott in this party?” he inquired.

“That’s my name,” Dick answered.

“Then I am requested by Dr. Bentley to guide you to a camping place inside the Terraces’ grounds,” replied the bell-boy.  “Dr. Bentley has arranged it with the manager.”

This was a surprise, indeed, but Dick & Co. followed their guide, who turned in through a gate at some distance from the handsome summer hotel.  Their guide led them to a grove on a broad terrace, from which the high school lads had an excellent view of one of the porches of the hotel.

“Look at the smartly dressed people over there!” groaned Greg, as soon as the bell-boy had left them.  “Look at those girls, in their gowns of white lace!  Look at the fellows over there, in flannels and white duck!  Look at-----”

“Shut up!” commanded Tom hoarsely.  “Don’t rub it in.”

“Dick,” suggested Darry, with some bitterness, “we’ll feel like princes in our flannel shirts and khaki leggings, won’t we?”

“I’ve an idea,” offered Danny Grin.  “By way of dressing up we can leave off our khaki leggings and give our trousers an extra brushing all around.  We’ll look quite respectable, after all!”

“Gentlemen,” remarked Tom Reade solemnly, “I have the honor to make a motion to the effect that Messrs. Darrin, Holmes and Dalzell be appointed a committee of three to take Dick Prescott away and drown him in the nearest sizable body of water!”

“Carried!” proclaimed Hazelton.

Instead, however, all hands fell to work putting up the tent and preparing for supper.

“Rah, rah, rah!” rose joyously on the air.  Then, out of the woods behind the camp appeared eight young men in multi-colored raiment.  Gorgeous bands surrounded their straw hats; their blazer coats resembled so many rainbows.  Yet, apart from their coats of many colors, these young men were smartly dressed, and it was plain that they carried with them considerable of an estimate of their own importance.  Their average age appeared to be about twenty-one years.

“Rah, rah, rah!” rang the chorus again.  Then one of the eight, moving in advance of The others, called back: 

“Fellows, what have we here?”

“Gipsies!” called another.

“Plain hoboes!” from a third.

“It’s a gang of juvenile desperadoes escaped from some reformatory,” declared a fourth.

“Rah, rah, rah!”

With noisy yells the eight young men descended upon the camp.

“Don’t you think you’d better steer off?” called Dave, putting himself as much as he could in their way.

“Why, it talks!” cried one of the rah-rah-rah fellows, in mock astonishment.