The boys were to ride from Oak Run to Ithaca, and there take a small steamer which ran from that city to the head of the lake, stopping at Cedarville, the nearest village to Putnam Hall. At Cedarville one of the Hall conveyances was to meet them, to transfer both them and their baggage to the institution.
The run to Ithaca proved uneventful although the boys did not tire of looking out of the window at the beautiful panorama rushing past them. At noon they had lunch in the dining car, a spread that Sam declared was about as good as a regular dinner. Three o'clock in the afternoon found them at the steamboat landing, waiting for the Golden Star to take them up to Cedarville.
"Fred Garrison, by all that's lucky!" burst out Tom suddenly, as he rushed up to a youth of about his own age who sat on a trunk eating an apple.
"Tom Rover! Where are you bound?"
"To a boarding school called Putnam Hall."
"You don't say! Why, I am going there myself," and now Fred
Garrison nearly wrung off Tom's hand.
"If this isn't the most glorious news yet!" burst in Dick. "Why,
Larry Colby is going too!"
"I know it. But he won't come until tomorrow."
"And Frank Harrington is going too."
"He is there, already—he wrote about it day before yesterday.
That makes six of us New York, boys."