"Oh, pshaw!" leaped to Greg Holmes's lips, but he choked back the exclamation. What use would boys have for a log cabin in summer, when there was a chance to use it in mid-winter? Besides, the summer seemed a long way off.
"Is there any water near the cabin, Mr. Ripley?" asked Tom Reade, who possessed a practical head in such matters.
"Yes; a spring, within perhaps twenty or thirty feet of the doorway," nodded the lawyer. "Inside the cabin is one of the big, old-fashioned fire-places——"
"O-o-oh! A-a-ah!" gasped the youngsters in chorus.
"There are also eight bunks in the place, each with a straw or dry-leaf mattress," continued Mr. Ripley. "There are table and chairs, hand made and of the crudest kind, and some few tools."
"Say, wouldn't that make an ideal camp?" demanded Dick Prescott, turning to his chums, his eyes glowing.
All their faces were flushed with the excitement of the thing. Now that it was so close, and practical, all the boys of Dick & Co. felt a wild desire to be up and away for camp at once.
"And you say we may have the cabin, sir, and the right to cut some firewood in the forest?" Dick asked.
"I said you could, if you had your parents' full and free permission to go," replied Lawyer Ripley. "That, I fancy, is a very different thing."
"But if we get that permission, sir," urged Dick, "and come back and tell you so, then you will let us——"