s, lad, an I'll do the same with mine!"

Neither Tom Reade nor Harry Hazelton are strangers to the readers of this
series, nor of the series that have preceded the present one.

Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton, now engineers in charge of a big breakwater
job on the Alabama gulf coast, were first introduced to our readers in the
"_Grammar School Boys Series_." There we met them as members of that
immortal band of American schoolboys known as Dick & Co. Back in the old
school days Dick Prescott had been the leader of Dick & Co., though, as all
our readers know, Prescott was not the sole genius of Dick & Co. Greg
Holmes, Dave Darrin, Dan Dalzell and Tom and Harry had been the other
members of that famous sextette of schoolboy athletes.

After reading of the doings of Dick & Co. in the "_Grammar School Boys
Series_," our readers again followed them, through the events recorded in
the four volumes of the "_High School Boys Series_". Here their really
brilliant work Boys Series athletes was stirringly chronicled, as along
with scores of non-athletic adventures that befell them.

At the close of the high school course Dick Prescott and Greg Holmes
secured appointments as cadets at the United States Military Academy at
West Point. All that befell them there is duly set forth in the "_West
Point Series_." Dave Darrin and Dan Dalzell were fortunate enough to
secure appointments as midshipmen in the United States Naval Academy at
Annapolis, and their doings there are set forth in the "_Annapolis
Series_."

Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton, on the other hand, had felt no call to
military glory. For their work in life they longed to become part of the
great constructive force wielded by modern civil engineers. During the
latter part of their high school work they had studied hard with ambition
to become surveyors and civil engineers. In their school vacations they
had sought training and experience in the offices of an engineering firm
in their home town of Gridley. After being graduated from the Gridley High
School, Tom and Harry had done more work in the same offices. Then, in a
sudden desire for advancement, and possessed by the longing for a wider
field of endeavor, Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton had secured positions as
"cub engineers" on the construction work that was being done to rush a new
railway, system over the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. The stern, hard work
that lay before them, the many adventures in a rough wil