did not pay any
community to indulge in a Rip Van Winkle sleep.

And now that the seed had taken root, and Chester was fully awake, some
of her most enterprising citizens were promising to take up the subject
of a gymnasium and boys' club-house, where the young lads of the town
could, under the management of a physical director, have a proper place
to spend their spare hours with profit to themselves.

Vacation had not as yet made any serious inroads on their summer season,
and for some little time now Jack and his two best chums had been trying
to figure out some scheme that would occupy a couple of weeks, and give
them the outing they were hungering for.

All sorts of ideas had cropped up, but thus far nothing seemed to have
caught their fancy to such an extent that their enthusiasm ran wild. It
was just at this interesting stage of the game that Jack had called to
the others over the 'phone, to ask them to drop in at his place that
evening after supper, and hinting after a boyish fashion that he might
have something "real interesting" to discuss with them.

Familiarity with Jack's den caused both the visitors to lose no time in
seating themselves in favorite seats. Steve threw himself haphazard upon
an old but comfortable lounge, tossing his cap at the same time toward a
rack on the wall, and chuckling triumphantly when by sheer luck it stuck
on a peg.

Toby curled up in the depths of a huge Morris chair that had been
discarded as unworthy of a place in the living-room downstairs, and to
which in due season Jack had naturally fallen heir.

"Now, we've strolled over this evening in response to your call, Jack,"
observed Steve, with one of his wide grins, "and full to the brim with
expectancy, as well as supper. Suppose you unload and tell us what
you've struck this time?"

"Yes, spin the yarn, please, Jack, because I'm fairly quivering with
suspense, you must know," urged Toby, with a vein of entreaty in his
voice.

Jack laughed. He knew that while the others were trying to appear cool,
inwardly both of them were boiling with curiosity and eagerness.

"Well, the conundrum is solved, I reckon," he went on to say; "that is,
if both of you agree with me that this chance is something like a gift
dropped from the blue sky. We made up our minds a long time ago that it
must be some sort of outing for us this summer, and the only thing that
looked dubious was the state of our funds, and they have been drained
pret