Besides his dinner Hank had with him a little camera, which his folks had given to him on his birthday because he promised not to make any more awful smells with chemicals in the cellar. Hank was always mixing things to see what would happen and he pretty near blew his house up at one time. He is an inventor, too, and says that when he grows up he is going to make a flying machine. He nearly made one once. He made a kite that would pull us uphill on our sleds.
One time he made a spanking machine which worked with a crank, and when teacher wanted us to lick Bill we spanked him with it. Only we laid a horse hair across the seat of his pants to see what it would do and it broke the machine. Of course, he didn't make the camera, but he had a place down cellar where he developed and printed his pictures after the camera had taken them.
"Gee, fellers," said Skinny, "Hank is goin' to take our pictures. Everybody look pleasant."
"Not on your life," Hank told him. "You'd break the machine; that's what."
We went up through Blackinton's orchard and followed the road around to the top of the hill.
In a field, a little west of the top, the same field where we chased the high-school girls, stand what we call the "twin stones." They are big ones, six feet high and maybe more. One of these we use for a fireplace. It is near Plunkett's woods, where it is always easy to find dry sticks to burn. A piece of the rock has been split off in such a way that it makes a kind of hearth, with a place between for a fire.
"Let's come back here for dinner," I said. "When we build a fire in the cave the smoke makes our eyes smart. What do you say?"
So we went into the woods and hid our lunch and some potatoes, which we had carried in our pockets to cook, but Hank wouldn't leave his camera. He said it cost too much to let it lie around in the woods. His folks paid three dollars for it.
Then we hurried on to the cave.
"Open sesame!" said Skinny, pounding the outside of the cave with a club, like the robber did in "Arabian Nights."