he sat tilted back against the outer wall on the hotel porch.

"It looks like it," muttered Hal Hastings, under his breath.

"Doesn't look like a very bustling place, does it?" asked Jack, with
a smile, as he set down a black, cloth-covered box on the porch and
leisurely helped himself to a chair.

The box looked as though it might contain a camera. "Tin-type fellers,"
thought Holt to himself, and did not form a very high estimate of the
two boys, neither of whom was more than sixteen years of age.

Just now, both boys were dusty from long travel on foot, which condition,
at a merely first glance, concealed the fact that both were neatly
enough, even if plainly, dressed.

"Huh!" was all the response Jabez Holt made to Jack's pleasant comment.
Hal, however, not in the least discouraged by a reception that was not
wholly flattering, set down a box not unlike Jack's, and also something
hidden in a green cloth cover that suggested a camera tripod. Hal
helped himself to one of the two remaining chairs on the porch
of the little hotel.

"Takin' pictures?" asked Jabez Holt, after a pause spent in chewing at
a tooth-pick.

"Yes, some of the time," Jack assented. "It helps out a bit when two
fellows without rich fathers take a notion to travel."

"I s'pose so," grunted Jabez. He was not usually considered, by his