BUYING FUEL FOR A BONFIRE?
"Well, what are we going to do with our magnificent war canoe?" asked Greg Holmes dolefully. "Does the bonfire idea go?"
"It doesn't," Dick retorted. "Although we don't know anything about such a job, and though it is supposed to need a sure enough expert to do it, we're at least going to try the thing out and see if we can't make this canoe float, and carry us safely, at that!"
"We'd better decide how to get it away from here, anyway," proposed
Tom Reade. "We haven't any lease of this lot."
Over near the road a group of men and boys were laughing heartily. It was at the lawyer's son that their mirth was directed. As for Dick & Co., the Gridley crowd felt only sympathy. The proceedings of the afternoon had but emphasized the old idea that at an auction sale one must either use great judgment or take his chances.
"Say," called Dick, "there goes the very man we ought to ask for advice. Harry, will you run over and ask Hiram Driggs to come here?"
Hazelton, nodding, hurried away at full speed. "Hiram Driggs is an awfully high-priced man," sighed Tom Reade.
"Perhaps his mere advice won't come high," young Prescott answered. "If it does, we'll begin right by telling him that we have no money—-that we've nothing in fact but a birchbark white elephant on our hands."
Driggs came over promptly, his keen, shrewd eyes twinkling.
"So you boys have been buying away from my shop, and have been 'stung,' eh!" queried Driggs, a short, rather stout man, of about forty.