"On top of what?"
"Why, can't you see? If it hadn't been for my lamp I should have taken the worst header anybody ever heard of. How some fellows can run around on their wheels after dark without a light, and take the chances of breaking their necks, beats my time, I wouldn't do it for any money."
"Great Scott! How do you suppose that pile of things came on the track?"
"It isn't a pile of things. It is a big rock which has rolled down from the bank above, and we have discovered it in time to prevent a terrible railroad disaster."
"The rains loosened it, probably."
"Well, what are we standing here for? Let's take hold, all hands, and roll it off before the train comes along."
"We can't roll it off. It's half as big as Rube Royall's cabin. It seems strange to me that it stopped so squarely in the middle of the track. I should think it ought to have gathered headway enough during its descent to roll clear across the road-bed, and down into the gulf on the other side."
The speakers were your old friends Joe Wayring and his two chums, Roy Sheldon and Arthur Hastings; and I am one of the Expert Columbians who were introduced to your notice in the concluding chapters of the second volume of this series of books. I have been urged by my companions to describe the interesting and exciting incidents that happened during our vacation run from one end of the State to the other and back again, on which we set out just a week ago to-day. I have begun the task with many misgivings. This is my first appearance as a story-teller; but then my friends, Old Durability and the Canvas Canoe, labored under the same disadvantage. When I am through it will be for you to decide which one of us has interested you the most.
You will remember that when the Canvas Canoe's adventures were ended for the season and he was "laid up in ordinary" (by which I mean the recess in Joe Wayring's room), it was midwinter. The ponds and lakes were frozen over, and the hills surrounding the little village of Mount Airy were covered with snow. The canoe had just been hauled up from the bottom of Indian River, where he had lain for four long, dismal months, wondering what was to become of him and the six thousand dollars he had carried down with him when he was "Snagged and Sunk" by the big tree that was carried out of Sherwin's Pond by the high water. You know that Roy Sheldon discovered him with the aid of his "water-scope," that Joe got his canoe back (a little the worse for his captivity, it must be confessed, for there was a gaping wound in his side), and that the money quickly found its way into the hands of the officers of the Irvington bank, from whom it had been stolen by the two sneak-thieves who were finally captured by Mr. Swan and his party.