"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.

"Robbed, I'd call it," replied Dave Darrin.

"Same thing, at a horse trade or an auction sale," hinted Hiram
dryly as he got up on the truck. "Let's have a look at your steam
yacht."

For a few moments Driggs looked the canoe over in grim silence.

"Whew!" was time final comment.

"Pretty bad, isn't it?" Dick inquired.