The other boys now noticed that Billy carried a black box under his arm, but until Jack had spoken of it they had not observed it.
“That is not a lunch box,” laughed Billy, “but you have eyes all the same. No one else noticed it.”
“What is it, anyhow?” asked Kenneth Blaisdell, one of the new boys at the Academy. “Box for botanic specimens?”
“No, it is not and I am not going to satisfy your curiosity by telling you what it is just now,” chuckled Billy. “Come on, Dick, we have a large enough party now.”
There were Percival, Jack, Harry, Arthur, Billy Manners, Blaisdell and Jasper Sawyer, the boy whose initials were the same as Jack’s, seven in all, and each of the party well liked by all the rest.
They set off without delay, and passing through the woods back of the Academy, and avoiding the ravine down which Jack had fallen, kept on down the hill on the side away from the station at the foot, and then up another and through a very rough, extremely wild section, where travel at times was most difficult.
“There is not much wonder that we have not been here before,” laughed Billy Manners, as he sat on a rock and puffed for breath after they had gone some distance through the thicket, and stopped in an opening where the travel was better.
“Yes, we should have brought axes with us,” said Percival. “I had no idea the country through here was so rough.”
“Well, the doctor said it was and so did some of the fellows,” said Arthur; “so we cannot say anything.”
“Did they tell you about this gully?” asked Jack, who had gone ahead a few paces, and paused in front of a deep gully stretching right across their path, and presenting an obstacle which there seemed to be no way of getting over.