the float of the Hotel Pleasant.

Even before they had landed, Fred Ripley, who was stopping with
his father and mother at the Lakeview House, alighted from an
automobile runabout in the woods some two hundred yards from the
lakeside camp of Dick & Co.

"Those muckers are away," Fred told himself, as he watched the
war canoe go in at the hotel float. "Now, if I have half as much
ingenuity as I sometimes think I have, I believe I can cut short
their stay here by rendering that cheap crowd homeless---and foodless!"




CHAPTER XIII

THE RIPLEY HEIR TRIES COAXING


Fred studied the now distant canoe, then glanced carefully about
the camp.

He knew that any sign of his presence, observed by Dick & Co.,
would be sure to result in the swift return of the canoe, with
its load of six indignant boys.

Nor did young Ripley dare to risk discovery as the perpetrator
of the outrage he was now planning. He feared his father's certain
wrath.