"I want to see it now. I am not going to pay for a new hat if this one is all right."
"Ha! so you don't want to take my word for it, eh?" roared the man.
"I want to look the hat over," answered Luke, stubbornly.
"So do I," added Buster.
"I'll not give you the hat—to play more tricks with. I shall take it to a hat dealer, and if he says it is injured, I'll call at the school about it." And having thus delivered himself the man in the buggy put the silk hat on his head, spoke to his horse, and whirled on down the road in the direction of Rockville.
"Talk about a peppery individual!" cried Ben. "He certainly is one."
"I don't think the hat was damaged at all," said Dave. "It will simply be a hold-up—if he tries to get a new one out of us. That hat is quite old and rusty-looking."
"He was a rusty-looking fellow all the way through," commented Buster. "Wonder who he is?"
"He's some kind of a doctor," answered the carryall driver, who had left his turnout to join the boys. "He came to Oakdale and Rockville this summer, and he gives lectures on how to git well and strong, an' then he sells medicine. I know a feller got a bottle from him, but it didn't do him no good. He calls himself Doctor Montgomery,—but I reckon he ain't no real doctor at all."
"Must be one of these quacks who go around the country trying to rope people in," said Dave. "If he is, he ought to be run out of the neighborhood."