"Hi! Hi!" cried Tuttle. "There you go! Have a peanut for that." "No, nut for me; I shell nut take it," declined Chipper. "It's a real case of Damon and Pythias," remarked Stone, watching the two lads coming up the walk. "Or David and Jonathan," said Eliot. Phil Springer, the taller of the pair, with light hair, blue eyes, and long arms, looked at a distance the better qualified to toe the slab in a baseball game; but Rodney Grant was a natural athlete, whose early life on his father's Texas ranch had given him abounding health, strength, vitality, and developed in him qualities of resourcefulness and determination. Grant had come to Oakdale late the previous autumn, and was living with his aunt, an odd, seclusive spinster, by the name of Priscilla Kent. Two girls, sauntering down the path with their arms about each other, met the approaching boys, and paused a moment to chat with them. "Phil's sister is struck on our gay cowboy," observed Cooper, grinning. "I rather guess Lela Barker is some smit on him, too," put in Sile Crane. "That's sorter natteral, seein' as how he rescued her from drowndin' when she was carried over the dam on a big ice-cake in the Jinuary freshet. That sartainly made him the hero of Oakdale, and us fellers who'd been sayin' he was a fake had to pull in our horns." "The real hero of that occasion," declared Hooker maliciously, "was a certain cheap chap by the name of Bunk Lander, who plunged into the rapids below the dam, with a rope tied round his waist, and saved them both." "I wouldn't sneer about Lander, if I were you, Roy," said Eliot in grave reproof. "I wouldn't call him cheap, for he's shown himself to be a pretty decent fellow; and Stickney, whose store he once pilfered, has given him a job on his new delivery wagon. There's evidently more manhood and decency in Lander than any of us ever dreamed--except Grant, who took up with him at the very beginning." "And a fine pair people around here thought they were," flung back Hooker exasperatedly. "Why, even you, yourself, didn't have much of anything to say for Rod Grant at one time." "I was mistaken in my estimation of him," confessed Roger unhesitatingly. "I believe Stone was about the only person who really sized Grant up right." "And now, since he's become popular, this hero from Texas chooses Springer for his chum instead of Stone," said Roy. "He has a right to choose whoever he pleases," said Ben, flushing a trifle. "We are still good friends. If he happens to find Springer more congenial than I, as a chum, I'm not going to show any spleen about it." "It's my opinion," persisted Hooker, "that he has an object in his friendliness with Phil Springer. He's got the idea into his head that he can pitch, and he's using Phil to learn what he can. Well, we'll see how much he does at it--we'll see." The girls having passed on, the two boys now approached the group near the steps. Springer was beaming as he came up.