All day Saturday the Auto Boys had spent in erecting their permanent camp and in establishing connections for such part of their food supply as they could best obtain from some farm. The latter had not been easily accomplished. There was little cultivated land in the immediate neighborhood of the great woods. The nearest farmhouse was a half-mile away and the next one an equal distance beyond. Unluckily, too, it had been found necessary to go to the second of the farms in order to obtain milk. It would mean a two-mile tramp each morning, there and back. Either this or a trip in the car, and on account of the rough ground between the camp and the public road, the latter method was hardly desirable, as a daily practice. Aside from this inconvenience the young campers were highly pleased with their location. They had yet to make arrangements for sending and receiving mail, but this they had planned to do on Sunday afternoon. Their letters home having been written, the most convenient grocery or other source of general supplies discovered, and all the odd tasks incident to getting settled cleared away, they would be ready on Monday morning, they planned, to begin the long contemplated attack upon the secrets of the great, silent woods. But now had come the unexpected arrival of Messrs. Gaines, Pickton and Perth much nearer these scenes than any of the four friends had supposed they ever would be. It might make an entire revision of the program necessary. "As to that same, we shall see," said Billy Worth, looking up from the letter writing on which, barring numerous interruptions, all were engaged. "How d'ye spell 'barnacles'?" demanded Paul Jones, insistently, the same moment. "Huh! Barnacles! I'll bet that's the Trio," laughed Billy. "Lot Jones knows about barnacles," sniffed MacLester. "That so? Listen to my letter: 'The insectivorous barnacles on the face of nature'--meaning Gaines and his bunch, of course--'them would-be cutaneous young billy goats'--meaning Gaines and the rest again--'have hurled their preposterous physiognomy unfrequented and unbid into this locality.'" A merry laugh greeted Paul's conclusion and he grinned his own delight with himself. "Still, I bet he don't know what a barnacle is," persisted Dave with good-natured derision. "Why, you certain species of shell fish! What do you mean by your insolence?" demanded Jones, with mock dignity. "Barnacles--from the Latin word 'barn,' meaning a kind of stable, and the Greek word 'culls,' meaning an inferior kind of anything. Together, then, barnacles--an inferior kind of stable, a--a pig sty, say? So there you have it; but you might have let it go without forcing me to use such a low word as 'pigs' in the presence of gentlemen, just to make myself clear in your laborious mental processes." Phil and Billy laughed at this sally but went on with their writing. Dave must give one return shot, and it was: