“That reminds me. What shall we do with those gates?” asked Percy.
“My dear boy,” exclaimed Edwards with a laugh, “it was your suggestion to bring them, and so they are yours.”
“Thanks, awfully,” said Percy, “but I don’t want them. Let us file the chains or break the padlocks, and throw the gates overboard.”
“There you go again, Percy,” said Edwards. “Don’t you see that that would put us in the wrong at once? We want to hold the gates subject to return so as to show that we didn’t come to steal anything. Loosen them from the cannons, that is the first thing. Then for the time being we can leave them down at our boathouse. When Park College wants them back we can return them.”
Percy and several others went below to work over the cannons, while the rest of us remained on the upper deck during the trip home. By the time we had reached the lake and were making toward our dock, the gates had been loosened, and the cannons considerably lightened by their freedom from these encumbrances, stood ready for their old positions.
Accordingly, after the gates had been placed by the boathouse, the fellows manned the ropes and started off briskly with the cannons. As we left the pier the rope on which I was pulling snapped close by the carriage. A halt was called to repair the break. Ray Wendell drew out his match-box—a handsome silver case which he always carried with him—and lit a match, while I crept under the carriage and refastened the rope. Then we started on again, Ray pulling on the same rope with me, and immediately in front of me. When we had got about half way up the hill from the lake the fellow who was just behind me leaned forward and whispered:
“Will you ask Wendell for his match safe, please?”
I immediately touched Ray on the arm.
“Let me have your match safe, will you, Ray?”
He handed it to me at once, and I passed it back to the fellow behind, who, being masked like the others, was unrecognized by me.