assumed a dramatic attitude, and quoted excerpts from some school
declamation, his favorite, of course, being "Horatio at the Bridge."

It was "K. K." who got up the annual foraging expedition on this
particular year, and promised that they should go in style in the
antiquated seven-passenger car belonging to his father, who was a
commercial traveler, which car "K. K." often used, when he could
raise the cash to provide sufficient gasolene at twenty-five cents
per gallon. But on this momentous occasion each fellow had chipped
in his share pro rata; so that the generous provider of the big, open
car was not compelled to beg or borrow in order to properly equip the
expedition.

For ten days and more previously some of the boys had industriously
interviewed the farmers who stood in the market-place during the early
mornings, selling the products of their acres. Doubtless numerous
good mothers wondered what caused such an early exodus from warm beds
those days, since farmers had a habit of getting rid of their produce
at dawn, and driving off home while most schoolboys were indulging in
their last nap.

But, by various means, they had learned just where the nuts grew most
plentifully that season; and quite a list of available places had
been tabulated: to the Guernsey Woods for blacks; plenty of
shagbarks, and some shellbarks to be gathered over at the old Morton
Place, where no one had lived these seven years now; and they said
the chestnuts away up in that region miles beyond the mill-pond was
bearing a record crop this season, as if to make amends for lean
years a-plenty.