nd equipped for all sorts of
possibilities.

"Of course you'll both be able to go?" said Fred.

"I certainly will," answered Peter. "I've lost so much time this
winter already, with our other trip, and then having my mind on the
diamonds and dodging newspaper reporters and things, that I've got
hopelessly behind. My laboratory work especially has gone all to
pieces. I'm bound to fail on next summer's exams, anyway, so I'm going
to let it slide and make the trip, on the chance that I'll make such a
fortune that I won't have to practice medicine for a living at all.
How about you, Maurice?"

"I wouldn't miss it for anything--if I could help it," Maurice replied.
"I don't know, though, whether I can afford it."

Maurice's parents were not in rich circumstances, and Horace hastened
to say--

"I'm paying for this expedition, you know, out of the diamond money.
There'll be plenty, and some to spare."

"Well, it isn't exactly the cost," said Maurice, "but my father is
awfully anxious for me to make an honor pass next summer. I couldn't
afford to fail, and have to take another year at the work. I don't
know, though,--I'll see. I'd be awfully disappointed if I had to stay
out of it."

Under the circumstances they could not urge him to say more. As for
Horace and Fred, they had very few family ties. Their closest
relatives were an aunt and uncle in Montreal. The trip was quite in
the line of Horace's profession, and Fred did not mind resigning the
post he held in the real estate office. The firm was shaky; it was not
likely to continue in business much longer, and he would be likely to
have to look for another position soon in any event. As they had
feared, Maurice was obliged to announce his inability to go with them.
His professors thought that an absence of two months would be a
handicap that he could never make up. In the eyes of his parents the
expedition was no more than a hare-brained expedition into the woods,
that would cost a whole year of collegiate work. To his bitter
disappointment, he had to give it up.

Fred and Macgregor at once began to train as if for an athletic
contest. They took long cross-country runs in the snow and worked hard
in the gymnasium. They introduced a new form of exercise that made
their friends stare. They appeared on the indoor running track bent
almost double; each carried on his back a sack of sawdust, held in
place by a broad leather band that passed over the top