to bet that those
'horny-handed sons of toil' had it on us when it came to the real joy of
living."

"Tom was born too late?" chaffed Bert. "He doesn't really belong in the
twentieth century. He ought to have lived in the time of Ivanhoe, or
Young Lochinvar, or the Three Musketeers, or Robin Hood. I can see him
bending a bow in Nottingham Forest or breaking a lance in a tournament or
storming a fortress by day, and at night twanging a guitar beneath a
castle window or writing a sonnet to his lady's eyebrow."

"Well, anyhow," defended Tom, "those fellows of the olden time had good
red blood in their veins."

"Yes," assented Dick drily, "but it didn't stay there long. There were
too many sword points ready to let it out."

And yet, despite their good-natured "joshing" of Tom, they, quite as much
as he, were eager for excitement and adventure. In the fullest sense they
were "birds of a feather." In earlier and ruder days they would have been
soldiers of fortune, cutting their ways through unknown forests, facing
without flinching savage beasts and equally savage men, looking ever for
new worlds to conquer. Even in these "piping days of peace" that they so
much deplored, they had shown an almost uncanny ability to get into
scrapes of various kinds, from which sometimes they had narrowly escaped
with a whole skin. Again and again their courage had been severely tried,
and had stood the test. At home and abroad, on land and sea, they had
come face to face with danger and death. But the fortune that "favors the
brave" had not deserted them, even in moments of deadliest peril. They
were accustomed to refer to themselves laughingly as "lucky," but those
who knew them best preferred to call them plucky. A stout heart and a
quick wit had "many a time and oft" extricated them from positions where
luck alone would have failed them.

And most of their adventures had been shared in company. The tie of
friendship that bound them together as closely as brothers was of long
standing. Beginning at a summer camp, five years earlier, where chance
had thrown them together, it had grown increasingly stronger with every
year that passed. A subtle free masonry had from the start made each
recognize the others as kindred spirits. Since this first meeting their
paths had seldom diverged. Together they had gone to college, where their
athletic prowess had put them in the first rank in sports and made them
popular among their comrades. On the