me that the first time some of you crossed
the lake in a canoe he rigged up some bushes to a wooden frame,
and swam, with his head inside the frame, hoping to get close
to you and hear what you had to say about him. Then, he tells
me, you moved your camp across the lake, and he knew you were
here on the law's business. He says he has known, for certain,
all along, that you'd get him sooner or later, but he couldn't
get up the strength of mind to leave here. What I told Ed about
his wife was true. She got nothing worse out of her fall than
a bruise on one elbow. Gosh! Ed's wife will be as tickled to
see him alive as he'll be to see her strong and well."

"Hoskins is a little touched in the upper story, isn't he?" Dick
asked.

"Maybe he has been lately," replied the Overseer of the Poor.
"But when he finds I haven't lied to him he'll be O.K. right
away. Ed was never too strong in his mental works, but he's a
good fellow, just the same, and he's bright enough for his
trade---blacksmith's helper. Now, I guess I'd better be going back
with him, for Ed will be all excitement and dread till he gets the
first word from his wife. Miss. Hoskins wife be terribly obliged
to you young men. I am, too, 'cause I'll be glad to see that couple
together again. They're so fond of each other that they've no
business apart. So I reckon, Master Prescott and the rest of you
young men, we'll be a-going now."

The visitors had soon left the camp behind them. The last seen
of Hoskins, he was walking with the dazed air of a man who knows
he's dreaming and is mortally afraid to wake up.

But that same day Mr. and Mrs. Hoskins were reunited and began
life anew together.

"It all goes to show," the Overseer of the Poor afterwards explained
philosophically, "what a fool a fellow is to be afraid to go
back and look at his work. It's the same spirit that makes automobile
cowards afraid to stop the machine and go back to look at the
child they've hit. Any fellow that's afraid to go back and look
at his mistake is bound to be mainly unhappy in life."

A very few days afterwards Dick & Co., still propelling the push
cart by turns, arrived in Gridley toward dark one late July evening.

They had so much to tell their relatives and friends that none
of them got to bed very early on that occasion.

However, the month of August lay before them. These boys now
planned the greatest summer vacation trip that they had ever enjoyed.
Part