of the history be summed up briefly, then, by recording only the bare facts that, with the help of Paul, who did not remain at the baseball park, it will be remembered, Worth and MacLester loaded the automobile with camp outfit and baggage and were safely beyond the city all within two hours.

By a circuitous route, avoiding the streets most used for motor traffic, the three reached the country roads. Here, too, they chose the least traveled thoroughfares until fully ten miles had been placed between them and Lannington.

Even by the longer route, Littleton, nearly forty miles distant, might have been reached before dark; but to attract the least possible notice they lingered in little frequented roads, and ran quietly into the Yorkshire House garage and stable just after sundown. So was the car, laden down with the evidences of an extensive expedition, and well calculated to attract much notice, housed for the night.

The three boys believed they had been observed by not one person likely to mention having seen them—at least to anyone from whom, directly or indirectly, the Trio would obtain intelligence of their movements. They told Phil as much, and with evident satisfaction, when they met him upon his arrival by suburban trolley car, later in the evening.—And now another day had come. The Auto Boys were in the best of spirits as they left the lately risen sun and Littleton in their rear.

"'Westward the Star of Empire takes its way,'" quoted Billy Worth, waving his cap zestfully, as the automobile bowled smoothly along, MacLester at the wheel.

"Takes its Way and also its Worth, and MacLester and Jones," shouted Paul, with that expansive grin which never failed to bring a smile from any sort of person disposed to be half-way good-natured.

"Say, Jones, they've hung people out in the Ship woods country for horse-stealing, and that's hardly a misdemeanor compared to such downright atrocities as you perpetrate! Goodness! That was bad!" declared Dave. He always did like to have a fling at Paul. "The best pun is horrible, but a poor one!—"

"What did you say about the 'breast bone' Mac?" shouted Jones, from the tonneau, with admirable pretense of having caught but two words and caught neither of those correctly, as the car whizzed forward. Then, almost without pause, "Yes, I like the white meat, too!" he sang out.

"White meat? Don't mention it! I'm positively starving," Worth put in, and in a twinkling the whole conversation changed to the subject of the noonday lunch and what the car's larder afforded. Paul's hearing improved very greatly, at once, by the way.

"Why, we have a cheese-box full of cold ham and buns and baked beans and pickles and a cake and cheese and pie and—" Jones enumerated; then MacLester, quickly going forward with the inventory, as Paul paused for breath, added:

"Sardines, bananas, olives and potato chips, and I'll bet half the stuff will spoil on our hands."

"Risk it!" Phil Way observed in the tone of one who speaks from experience. And somewhat later when a halt was made for luncheon, weighty evidence was presented that if any risk whatever existed it was extremely slight. The very hour appropriated to a noonday purpose was strong testimony—not yet eleven o'clock. However, breakfast had been extremely early, it will be remembered.

With a great deal more haste than ceremony, the roadside repast being finished, dishes and food were packed away again and the automobile sent once more bounding forward. Nearly fifty miles onward lay the little town of Sagersgrove and here the Auto Boys expected to receive information direct from Lannington concerning the movements of Gaines, Pickton and Perth.

How much or how little those young gentlemen may have discovered by this time, and what their intentions might be, were matters of marked interest to the chums who had so cleverly outwitted them. They were more than pleased with themselves, therefore, that their foresight had prompted the making of arrangements with Mr. Knight to send a telegram to Sagersgrove to be received upon reaching there.

That Knight & Wilder shared the secret of the four boys it is almost needless to say. Even to knowledge of the destination and the real purpose of the journey the garage proprietors had been taken into confidence. They were good, reliable friends, to begin with, and as the location of the Ship woods was remote from sources of automobile supplies, it might be necessary to send to them for repairs. And as both men had shown a lively interest in the enterprise now under way, it was quite certain Mr. Knight would not fail to have news of some kind awaiting the travelers at the point agreed upon.

Meanwhile the probable and possible discoveries of the Chosen Three and what their ultimate plans would be were discussed over and over again. Even if Gaines and his followers should learn the direction the Thirty had taken—even if they chanced upon the discovery that the party had spent the night in Littleton—they would still be unable to so much as guess the direction taken next.

Again, even if the Trio had any knowledge of the great Ship forest they would have no reason for supposing the four friends to be bent on reaching that wilderness. All the information the Gaines crowd had, so far as known, and the thing which so seriously pricked their curiosity, was that sentence they had somehow overheard, "Three stones piled one on top of another to mark the place."

"They could connect that and the big woods if they knew where we were heading for; but by itself the talk of the three stones gives them nothing to go by," urged Billy Worth. He had put the same thought into slightly different words at least a half-dozen times before and the others had done no less. But there was no cause to doubt his reasoning.

"Three stones piled one on top of another" might be used to mark many and many different sorts of places. They might be in town. They might be in the country, in pasture or meadow; beside a lake in the valley, or on the summit of the hills. Again, what reason why they might not be in the heart of a great forest?

The Ship woods comprised such a forest. Its very name was derived from the fact that for long years great timbers for ship building purposes had been cut there. In one part or another of its vast expanse men were at work the whole year through, sawing, chopping, hewing. A single "stick" from the forest's depths might measure more than one hundred feet in length by three feet or more each way, in thickness. Perhaps four teams of horses would be used to haul such a piece of timber out of the woods and to the railroad siding where it was loaded for transportation to the owners' mills, many miles away.

The fact that those who owned the forest did live a long distance from it, naturally left the vast tract in the hands of only such men as were employed in cutting the big "sticks." And as the latter were little interested in anything more than the trees that would do for their purposes, the woods was for the most part regarded as pretty nearly public property. That is to say, no one so much as thought of asking permission to go there, to camp, to hunt, to pick blackberries, or anything of the kind.

Nor was anyone expected to do so, for that matter. The boss timber man and the crews which handled the saws, and axes, the heavy chains, the canthooks and all the paraphernalia of their hard, hard work, asked no questions of trespassers. They warned hunters against leaving campfires burning and against dropping lighted matches in the leaves. They would permit no one to chop into or otherwise injure a tree which might make "timber" then or later; but in general the occasional stranger who visited these wilds was as free to come to hunt, to fish, to build a brush shack or camp, or to gather firewood, herbs or poles or bark—to do almost as he pleased in short—and as free to go away again, as he would have been in the unclaimed forest of a new country.

All this information and much more the