"Yes, I remember that," answered Dave. "I am mighty glad Gus and he are keeping apart."
The three students walked past the hotel, and looking in at an open window, saw Jasniff and Merwell talking to a man who sat in the reading room with a newspaper in his hands.
"Why, that is that Hooker Montgomery!" exclaimed Roger. "The fake doctor who sells those patent medicines."
"We'd better not let him see us, or he'll be wanting a new silk hat from us," murmured Phil. And he grinned as he thought of what had occurred on the road on the day of their arrival at Oak Hall.
"I wonder if Jasniff met him at Dunn's on the river?" said Dave. "That is what the letter requested, you'll remember."
"Wonder what business Jasniff was to aid him in?" queried the shipowner's son.
"Maybe Jasniff is going to help him to dispose of some of his marvelous remedies," suggested Roger. "I reckon he could give the ignorant farmers as good a talk about them as Montgomery himself."
"More than likely, since Montgomery is a very ignorant man," answered Dave.
"The other fellows ought to be ready to go back to school by this time," said the senator's son, after watching those in the hotel for a minute. "Let us hunt them up;" and thus, for the time being, Jasniff, Merwell, and Doctor Montgomery were dismissed from their minds. The meeting at the hotel was an important one to our friends as well as to those who participated, but how important Dave and his chums did not learn until long afterwards.
It was a comical sight to see the boys of dormitories Nos. 11 and 12 walking back to the Hall, each with a shoe box under his arm. Sam Day led the procession, carrying his box up against his forearm, like a sword.