ducking expeditions.

"We might as well do something like that before school opens," said
Sam. "I think that Jack's suggestion is a pretty good one."

"I don't know that it's so bad myself," patronizingly admitted Bill;
"but what connection has that with your scheme for getting money, Jack?"

"A whole lot," replied the bully. "I'm going to get even with that
young Digby if it takes me a year. He cost me the fifty-dollar prize,
and, beside that, all the kids in the village now call me 'cheater,'
and hardly anybody will have anything to do with me."

"Well, how do you propose to get even by going camping?" inquired Bill.

"I plan to take that Digby kid with me," rejoined Jack calmly.

"You're crazy!" exclaimed Bill. "Why, we'd have the whole country
after us for kidnapping."

"Oh, I've got a better plan than that," laughed Jack coolly, "and we
won't need to be mixed up in it at all. It'll all come back on Hank
Handcraft, I owe him a grudge for bothering me about money, anyhow, the
old beach-combing nuisance!"

"But where do we come in to get any benefit out of it?" demanded Sam.

"I'll explain that to you later," said Jack grandiloquently. "I
haven't quite worked out all the details yet; but if you'll meet me
here this evening I'll have them all hot and smoking for you."

CHAPTER XII

JACK FORMS A PLOT

The next morning Jack lost no time in making his way toward Hank
Handcraft's tumble-down abode. He found its owner in, and likewise
disposed to be quarrelsome.

"'Oh, here you are at last!" exclaimed the hairy and unkempt outcast,
as the bully approached heavily through the yielding sand. "I'd about
given you up, and was seriously contemplating making a visit to your
home--"

"If you ever did," breathed Jack threateningly.

"Well," grinned Hank impudently, with his most malicious chuckle, "if I
did, what then?"

"I'd have you thrown out of the house," calmly replied Jack, seating
himself on a big log of driftwood, once the rib of a schooner that went
ashore on the dangerous shoals off Hampton and pounded herself to
pieces.

"Oh, no; you wouldn't have me thrown out!" chuckled Hank, resuming his
task of scaling a mackerel. "Cause if you did, I'd go to the chief of
police and tell him something about the robbery of the armory and the
cracking of old man Hudgins' safe."

"You wouldn't dare to do that!" sneered Jack. "You are implicated in
that as badly as we are."

"That's a matter o