y enough if Purt had kept still about his old revolver
being no good."

"I don't care," complained Purt. "The revolver would have been all
right if you hadn't taken that screw out and thrown it away."

"And you'd likely shot yourself--or somebody else--by this time."

"No I wouldn't," said Purt, gloomily.

"How do you know?" asked Chet.

"Why--I find that when I bought cartridges for that pistol I got
thirty-eights--and the pistol is a forty-five!"

The whole crowd laughed at that. Purt Sweet really _was_ too funny for
anything.

They got another good laugh on him before they went back to the
island. There was a squatter's cabin near the bank of the brook and
they trooped up there for a drink of cool milk, for the woman had two
cows and was willing to sell the milk to them, right from her log
buttery.

The woman's daughter--a girl about Lil Pendleton's age--waited on
them. She was a brown-skinned, big-eyed, healthy-looking girl--a
regular country beauty. Laura whispered:

"Isn't she a splendid creature?"

Purt had cocked an appreciative eye at her, and he murmured:

"Quite true--quite true, Miss Laura. She's as beautiful as Hebe," and
gave the name of the goddess the very best pronunciation, according to
Professor Dimp.

"Beautiful as _he_ be?" drawled Chet, in exaggeration of bucolic
twang, looking amusedly at the lank and lazy squatter himself who lay
snoring on the platform before the hut. "Huh! she's a sight purtier
than _he_ be. Why, _he's_ as humbly as a hedge-fence--an' ye can see,
Purt, that the girl takes after her mother."

"It sure is too bad how they rig you, Pretty," laughed Jess.

"Pretty's all right!" joined in Billy Long. "Only one thing wrong with
him. He starts easy, and he speeds up well, but just at the critical
moment he always skids."

"Hear the motor talk from Short and Long! Yow!" exclaimed Reddy Butts.
"And old Purt's not so slow at that!"

"Who said he was slow?" demanded Short and Long, with apparent
indignation. "Bet you can't do him, Reddy."

"Bet I can--and for half a dollar, too," declared the youth with the
radiant head of hair.

This was after the party had returned to the creek and luncheon was in
order. The other boys saw that the red-headed youth and Short and
Long had a scheme between them, and they sat back and prepared to
enjoy Purt's discomfiture.

"You can't fool Purt in a hundred years," Short and Long reiterated,
quite hotly.

"Can," returned Reddy,