CHAPTER I.
IN THE VALLEY

Turning over his morning mail, which Jared Fogg had just brought into the little Maine valley, Mr. Chisholm Dacre, the Bungalow Boys’ uncle, came across a letter that caused him to pucker up his lips and emit an astonished whistle through his crisp, gray beard. A perplexed look showed on his sun-burned face. Turning back to the first page, he began to read the closely written epistle over once more.

Evidently there was something in it that caused Mr. Dacre considerable astonishment. His reading of the missive was not quite completed, however, when the sudden sound of fresh, young voices caused him to glance upward.

Skimming across the deep little lake stretched in front of the bungalow came a green canoe. It contained two occupants, a pair of bright-faced lads, blue-eyed and wavy-haired. Their likeness left no doubt that they were brothers. In khaki trousers and canoeing caps, with the sleeves of their gray flannel shirts rolled up above the elbow exposing the tan of healthy muscular flesh, they were as likely a looking couple of lads as you would have run across in a muster-roll of the vigorous, clean-limbed youth of America. Regular out-of-door chaps, they. You couldn’t have helped taking an immediate liking to Tom Dacre and his young brother Jack if you had stood beside Mr. Dacre that bright morning in early summer and watched the lightly fashioned craft skimming across the water, its flashing paddles wielded by the aforesaid lusty young arms.

“Well, who would think to look at those two lads that they had but recently undergone such an experience as being marooned in the Tropics?” murmured Mr. Dacre to himself, as he watched his two nephews draw nearer.

There was a fond and proud light in his eyes as they dwelt on his sturdy young relatives. In his mind he ran over once more the stirring incidents in which they had all three participated in the Bahamas, and which were fully related in a previous volume of this series – “The Bungalow Boys Marooned in the Tropics.”

Our old readers will be able to recall, too, the bungalow, and the lake, and the country surrounding them. These environments formed the scene of the first volume of this series – “The Bungalow Boys.”

How different the little Maine lake looked now to its appearance the last time we saw it. Then it was swollen, angry, and discolored by the tumultuous waters of a cloudburst. At the water gate leading to the old lumber flume stood Tom Dacre and Sam Hartley, horror on their faces, while out on the lake, clinging to a capsized canoe, were two figures – those of a man and a boy. Suddenly the man raises his hand, and the next instant a cowardly blow has left him the sole occupant of the drifting canoe. Swept on by the current, the lad, his features distorted by fear, is being sucked into the angry waters of the flume, when a figure leaps into the water to the rescue, and —

But we are wandering from the present aspect of things. All that happened a good while ago, when the Bungalow Boys were having their troubles with the “Trubblers,” as old Jasper used to call them. At that time the little valley, not far from the north branch of the Penobscot River, was, as we know, tenanted by a desperate gang of rascals bent on ousting the lads from their strange legacy.

Everything is very different in the valley now. The old lumber camp up the creek – in the waters of which Jumbo, the big trout, used to lurk – has been painted and carpentered, and carpeted and furnished, till you wouldn’t know it for the same place. Mrs. Sambo Bijur, a worthy widow, is conducting a boarding house there to the huge disgust of the boys. Somehow, exciting – perilously so – as the old days often were, they have several times caught themselves wishing they were back again.

“It’s getting awfully tame,” were Tom’s words only the day before, when he had finished fishing the youngest of the Soopendyke family – of New York – out of the lake in which the said youngest member of the Soopendykes had been bent on drowning himself, or so it seemed. His distracted mother had rushed up and down on the shore the while.

“Like an old biddy that has discovered one of her chickens to be a duck,” chuckled Jack, in relating the story.

“And she kissed me,” chimed in Tom, with intense disgust, “and said I was a real nice boy, and if I’d come up to the boarding house some day she’d let me have a saucer of ice cream.”

Mr. Dacre had laughed heartily at this narration.

“Too old for ice cream since we defeated the wiles of Messrs. Walstein, Dampier and Co. – eh, Tom?” he exclaimed, leaning back in his big chair on the bungalow porch and laughing till the tears ran down his weather-beaten cheeks.

“It – it isn’t that, sir,” Jack had put in, “but a fellow – well, he objects to being slobbered over.”

“Better than being shot at, though, isn’t it, lads?” inquired Mr. Dacre, his gray eyes holding a merry twinkle.

“Um – well,” rejoined Tom, with a judicial air, “you know, Uncle, we’ve seen so much more exciting times in this old valley that it seems strange and unnatural to be overrun with Widow Bijur’s boarders. If it isn’t one of the little Soopendykes that’s in trouble, it’s Professor Dalhousie Dingle, with that inquiring child of his. I never saw such a child. Always asking questions. The other day the professor caught a bug and proceeded to stick a pin through it as he always does.

“‘Pa,’ asked Young Dingle, ‘does that hurt the bug?’

“‘I suppose so, my son,’ answered the professor.

“‘Then the bug doesn’t like it?’

“‘I guess not.’

“‘Will the bug die?’

“‘Undoubtedly, my boy.’

“‘Why do you kill bugs, papa?’

“‘For the purposes of science, my boy,’ answered the professor.

“‘Pa?’

“‘Yes, Douglas.’

“‘What is science?’

“‘It’s – it’s – ah, well, the art of explaining things, my boy.’

“‘Does it tell everything?’

“‘Yes, my boy.’

“‘Then what killed the Dead Sea, Pa?’”

Up to this point Mr. Dacre had listened gravely enough, but here he had to burst into a roar of laughter. When his merriment had subsided, he wished to know how the professor had dealt with such a “stumper.”

“What did he say to that, Tom?”

“Well,” laughed Tom, “I guess it was too much for him, for I heard him call Mrs. Bijur and ask her to give the lad a cookie. He said the boy’s brain was so large it was eating up his mind.”

This conversation is related so that the reader may form some idea of how the valley has changed from the last time we participated in the Bungalow Boys’ adventures therein. Mrs. Bijur had other boarders, but Mrs. Soopendyke, with her numerous progeny, and Professor Dingle and his inquiring son, were the most striking types. But while we have been relating something of the Bungalow Boys’ neighbors, they have run their canoe up to the wharf, made fast the painter, and, with paddles over their shoulders – for fear of predatory Soopendykes – made their way up to the porch.

“Out early to-day, Tom,” was Mr. Dacre’s greeting.

“Yes, we thought we’d see if we couldn’t succeed in getting a bass or two before the sun got too hot,” rejoined Tom.

“And you did?”

For answer Tom held up a string of silvery beauties.

“Not bad for two hours’ work,” laughed Jack, leaning his rod against the porch.

“No, indeed, and more especially as Jasper has just informed me that we are almost out of meat. I was thinking of taking a stroll up to Mrs. Bijur’s after a while, to see if I could borrow some. Do you boys want to go?”

Tom threw up his hands and burst into a laugh in which Jack joined.

“Might as well,” they chuckled. “At all events, there’s always something amusing going on up there. By the way, the bugologist” (Tom’s name for the dignified Professor Dingle) “is off on a new tack now.”

“Is that so?” inquired Mr. Dacre interestedly, “and what is that, pray?”

“Why he’s got some wonderful notion about a new explosive. He’s been experimenting with it for some days now.”

“A new explosive!” echoed Mr. Dacre, in an amazed tone; “well, what does he expect to do with that?”

“Sell it to the government, I guess,” chuckled Tom. “I’ll bet, though, it won’t be as effective as that electric juice we turned into the handrail of the dear old Omoo off Don Lopez’s island.”

“I think it would have to be pretty powerful to equal the effects of that, indeed,” laughed Mr. Dacre, rising and thrusting the letter which had interested him so much into a side pocket of his loose linen jacket. He reached for his hat.

“Well, let’s be starting before it gets really warm. By the way, boys, as we go along I’ve something to talk to you about. But first I want to ask you a question. I want you to answer it honestly. Aren’t you getting a bit tired of your bungalow?”

Tom and Jack exchanged glances. As we know, the bungalow and the estate surrounding it, was their “legacy” from their uncle, and not for worlds would they have admitted that they were getting a little tired of the pleasant monotony of their lives there. But being ingenuous lads they had not been able to conceal it – as has been hinted, in fact.

Tom and Jack exchanged glances. As we know, the bungalow and the estate surrounding it, was their “legacy” from their uncle, and not for worlds would they have admitted that they were getting a little tired of the pleasant monotony of their lives there. But being ingenuous lads they had not been able to conceal it – as has been hinted, in fact.

“Come,” said Mr. Dacre, a quizzical smile playing about the corners of his firm, yet kind, mouth. “Speak out; haven’t you exchanged views about the monotony of perfect plain sailing, or something of that sort?”

“Why, uncle, you must be a wizard!” exclaimed Tom. “Have you overheard us?”

Then both lads burst into a laugh, seeing how they had betrayed themselves.

“There, there,” chuckled Mr. Dacre, “you’d never do for diplomats – too honest,” he murmured, half to himself; “but, as Jasper would say – being as how you have given yourselves away, I have something to propose to you.”

“Hurray!” shouted Jack, capering about, “a trip? I’ll bet the hole out of a doughnut it’s a trip!”

“And you would win that bet,” cried Mr. Dacre, drawing out the letter from his pocket. “In the mail to-day there came a letter from a man from whom I have not heard for some time – a good many years, in fact.”

A cloud passed over Mr. Dacre’s face. They could see that for a moment he was back in the old painful past. But it passed as rapidly as a shadow on the surface of the rippling lake.

“My friend has a ranch in Washington State,” he went on, while the boys, with parted lips and sparkling eyes, fairly drank in his words. “It appears that he read in the papers about our adventures in the tropics. This letter is the result. He informs me that if I am anxious to make an investment with a part of the treasure of the lost galleon, that no better opportunity offers than the timber and fruit country of Washington. He says that he imagines that I must be anxious for rest anyhow, and, to make a long story short, he extends to me and to my two celebrated nephews” – the boys blushed – “a hearty invitation to visit him, renew old friendship, and take a look at the country. What do you say, boys – shall we go?”

Tom drew a long breath.

“Say, ever since I read that book on the Great Northwest of our country I’ve longed to get out there. Jack and I have talked it over many a time.”

Here Jack nodded vigorously.

“Will we go, uncle? Well,” Tom paused as he cast about for a fitting phrase, “well,” he burst out, “if we don’t, your Bungalow Boys will be Grumble-oh! boys.”

“Then I will write him this afternoon that we will come,” said Mr. Dacre soberly, though it was easy to see that he was almost as pleased as the lads at their decision. As for the boys, they joined in a wild half-war-dance, half-waltz that didn’t end till Jack was almost waltzed into the lake – not that in his frame of mind he would have cared.

At this stage of the proceedings an inky-black countenance, crowned with a tightly curling crop of grayish wool, projected from a rear door of the bungalow. It was Jasper – former servant of Dr. Parsons, but now attached to the Bungalow Boys’ uncle.

“Fo’ de lan’s sake!” he cried, throwing up his hands in consternation. “Dem boys done be actin’ up lak dey was two crazy pertatur bugs. Misto Dacon” (Dacre was beyond Jasper), “Mr. Dacon, sah, does I git dat meat o’ does we dine on flap jacks an’ bacum?”

“You get the meat,” laughed Mr. Dacre, regarding with intense amusement the tragic mien of his colored servitor. “Come, boys, give Jasper your fish – just to ease his mind – and insure the safety of Mrs. Bijur’s chickens – and then let’s hurry on our errand. There’s a lot to do before we start for The Great Northwest.”

“The great northwest!” echoed Tom, picking up the now despised string of bass. “If there are any two finer words in the geographies, I’ve never heard them.”