"Well, all I can say, fellows," he remarked, as he carried an armful of the stuff he had been gathering to the spot where Max had already commenced to erect the sides of the squatty shelter by driving stakes into the ground, "is that I hope we haven't come all the way up here on a reg'lar fool's errand. It'd cost Mrs. Hopewell a pretty good sum, and be a real disappointment to her, if after all we didn't find that good-for-nothing nephew of hers, Roland Chase. Honest to goodness now, I'm a little inclined to believe he'll be leading us a wild-goose Chase, if you want my opinion." "Oh! l-l-let up, c-c-can't you, Bandy-legs!" spluttered the indignant Toby, pausing for a minute to wipe the beads of perspiration from his brow, and regain his breath in the bargain. "You're g-g-getting to be a regular old g-g-granny, that's what, with all your d-d-dismal p-p-prophesies. Tell me, d-d-did we _ever_ f-f-fail yet in anything we undertook? C-c-course we haven't. Right in the start we found all those b-b-bully p-p-pearls in those mussels we g-g-gathered in the Big Sunflower River, and laid away a n-n-nice n-n-nest-egg in bank for the crowd. Sure we'll f-f-find Roland Chase; we've just g-g-got to, that's all." "All I want to say about it, boys," observed Max, "is that I admire the grit of the boy. They told us he was something of a dude, didn't they, and that his rich uncle was afraid he'd never amount to much anyhow; so what did he do but make a most _extraordinary_ will; at least, everybody who's heard about that proviso says so. I heard Judge Perkins say though he guessed the old man knew boys better than most folks, and had taken a wise course to prove whether this Roland had any snap in him or not." "Well, he was left just two thousand dollars cash down," said Bandy-legs, in a thoughtful manner, as though reviewing the singular circumstance, "and if at the end of two years he could show that he had doubled that amount, besides earning his own living, why he was to come into two-thirds of his uncle's fortune. Some of our Carson people who know folks over in Sagamore where the uncle lived tell whopping big stories about the size of that fortune. I heard one man say he reckoned it was as much as two hundred thousand dollars, in all." "The funny part of it is," resumed Max, shaking his head in a way rather odd for him, "that immediately after Roland received his two thousand in cash he disappeared from the scene. That was almost two years ago; and from that day nobody in Sagamore has ever had a peep at him. The fact is he might almost be dead. Once his other aunt, Mrs. Hopewell, who lives now in Carson, had a few lines from Roland. He simply said he was alive and well, and that he had hopes of seeing her again one of these fine days."