This took them the best part of the evening, and having found that they had omitted a few things, they packed them into their grips and went to bed, Dick promising to come over early in the morning to go with the three chums to the train which they were all to take to reach Wilden.
Mr. and Mrs. Fairfield went to the station with the boys. The baggage was checked, and Tom had to spend some time saying good-bye to a number of his town chums.
“Hey, wish you’d take me along,” said Dent Wilcox, as he shuffled along the depot platform. He seemed to have forgotten his little feeling against Tom for not taking him in the motorboat, the day our hero got the letter from his chum. “Can’t you take me, Tom?”
“I might if you’d promise to chop all the wood, go for all the water, do the cooking, wash the dishes, make the beds, sweep up, and run for gasolene.”
“Huh!” exclaimed Dent, looking for a place to sit down. “I guess I don’t want to go.”
“And we don’t want you,” spoke Tom in a low voice.
There was a toot of the whistle, a puffing of smoke, and the train that was to take our lads to camp, pulled in. The last good-byes were said, Mrs. Fairfield made Tom promise about a dozen things that he would be careful about, and gave him so many injunctions that he forgot half of them. Mr. Fairfield shook his son’s hand, and those of his chums, and there was a trace of moisture in the eyes of father and son as they said farewell.
“Be careful, Tom,” said his father. “Don’t be tempted too much by the fortune in the old mill.”
“I won’t dad, but—er—that is, I think I’ll have a try for it—wild man or not.”