The boys were so eagerly looking ahead that they scarcely gave a backward glance at Clinton, as the train rolled away. Mr. Blake had his paper and a whole seat to himself. Bobby and Fred occupied a seat ahead of him, and laughed and chattered as they pleased.

"This is only Friday," said Fred, "and classes don't begin at Rockledge until Monday. We'll have two whole days to get acquainted in. Do you s'pose there will be some of the boys at the Rockledge station to meet us?"

"And a brass band, too, maybe – eh?" chuckled Bobby. "I guess nobody but the principal of the school knows we're coming, Fred. We'll be new boys, and the bigger fellows will boss us around at first."

"Huh! they can't boss me if I don't want to be bossed," declared the pugnacious Fred.

"Don't you begin to talk that way," advised his chum. "We'll have to be pretty small potatoes at first."

"I don't see why," grumbled Fred.

"You'll find out. My father went to a boarding school when he was a boy, and he told me," Bobby explained.

They did not have to wait until reaching Rockledge to learn something about the temper of the boys with whom they would be associated. At Cambwell several students got aboard and came into their car. They were all older than Bobby and Fred, and they were very noisy and self-assertive.

They sang, and joked together in the seats up front. Finally they spied the two boys from Clinton sitting in the middle of the car.

"Hullo!" exclaimed a tall, thin, yellow-haired boy who seemed to be a leader in the fun. "There's a couple of kids who look as though they'd just left home and mamma. Bet they're going with us."

One of the other boys said something in a low tone, and then he and the yellow-haired one got up and came down the aisle.

"Say!" said the second boy, who was short and stocky and squinted his eyes up in a funny way when he talked. "Goin' to school, sonnies?"

"Yes, we are," said Fred, sharply.

"Rockledge or Belden?"

"Rockledge, if you please," said Bobby, politely.

"Huh!" said the tall boy, grinning. "I don't know whether it pleases us any to have you go to Rockledge. But it's lucky you're not bound for Belden."

"Why?" asked Fred.

"We'd have to chuck your hats out of the window. We don't allow any Belden boys to ride in this train with their hats on."

"And do the Belden boys throw the Rockledge boys' hats out of the window?" asked Bobby, innocently enough.

"If they're able. But they ain't. You sure you are going to Rockledge?"

"You can wait till we get off the train and then find out whether we tell the truth, or not," said Fred, rather crossly.

"Say, young fellow! we don't like fresh fish at Rockledge," warned the yellow-haired boy. "If you're going there, you want to walk Turkey."

Bobby pinched Fred warningly, and both the chums remained silent.

"I never did like the looks of red hair, anyway – did you, Bill?" suggested the squinting chap, grinning.

"No. We'll have to dye it for him," said the yellow-haired boy. "What color do you prefer instead of red?" he asked Fred Martin.

"Well, I wouldn't like it to be straw-colored," responded Fred, promptly, and with a meaning glance at his interrogator's hair. "Any other will suit me better."

The yellow-haired boy flushed and his pale eyes sparkled. Fred stared back at him quite boldly, for the ten year old was no coward, whatever else he might be.

"Fresh fish – just as I told you," muttered the other strange boy, scowling and squinting at the same time. He was a very ugly boy when he did this. "Both of them."

"Well!" began Bill, and then stopped.

The train had halted at another station the moment before. Somebody entered the front door of the car, and at once the group of boys going to Rockledge School set up a shout.

"Hi, Barry!"

"See who's come in with the tide! Hey, Captain!"

"Hullo, Barry Gray!"

"Captain! Captain! How-de-do!"

Even the yellow-haired boy and his comrade turned to look. Bobby and Fred saw a handsome, brown haired fellow coming down the aisle. He was fourteen or older. He carried a light overcoat over his arm and he was very well dressed.

He tossed his coat and bag into one of the racks, and began shaking hands. Everybody seemed glad to see him. As he quickly glanced down the aisle his look seemed to quell Bill and the squinting boy.

"He's going to butt in, of course," growled the first named.

"Sure. Feels his oats – "

The fellow with the squint said no more. The handsome fellow, whose name seemed to be Barry Gray, came down the aisle almost at once.

"Hullo, Bill Bronson," he said, with some sharpness. "Up to your usual tricks?"

"It isn't any business of yours, Barry, what Jack and I do," growled the yellow-haired boy.

"I'll make it my business, then," said Barry Gray, laughing. Then he turned directly to Bobby and Fred.

"You kids going to Rockledge this term?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," said Bobby, quickly.

Barry Gray was not as tall as Bill Bronson, and perhaps not as old, but he evidently was not afraid of either of the bullies.

"Where are you from?"

"Clinton, sir," pronounced Bobby, again taking the lead.

"What's your name – and your chum's?" asked Barry.

"My name is Bob Blake, and this is Fred Martin," said Bobby.

"Glad to know you," said the older boy, shaking hands with both of them, and even Fred began to forgive him for calling them "kids."

"Ever been to school before?" asked Barry.

"Not to boarding school," Fred said.

"Come on up and I'll introduce you to the other fellows. Don't mind Bill Bronson and Jack Jinks, here," added Barry Gray, grinning at the two retiring bullies. "If they bother you much, come to me. I'm captain of the school this year, and Dr. Raymond expects me to keep all of the fellows straight. Being a captain is like being a monitor. You understand!"

"Oh, yes, sir," said Bobby.

"And you needn't 'sir' me so much," said the kindly captain. "Come on, now – "

Bobby turned to ask permission of his father. Barry at once saw that Mr. Blake was with the chums from Clinton.

"Who's this, Bob? Your father, or Fred's?"

"This is my father," said Bobby, politely.

The frank school captain stepped forward and offered his hand. "Glad to meet you, Mr. Blake," he said. "You trust the boys with me. I'll see that they get in right with the other fellows, and that they're not put upon too much."

"I'm sure of it," said Mr. Blake, smiling. "I shall feel better about leaving Bobby and Fred at Rockledge, knowing that you will have an eye on them."

"Oh, you can be easy about them," said Captain Gray who, despite his natural conceit, seemed a very nice fellow. "Of course, they'll have to take a few hard knocks, and the boys will 'run' them some. But they sha'n't be hurt."

"Huh!" muttered Fred. "I guess we can take care of ourselves."

Barry looked down at him and grinned. "Yes, I see you own red hair," he observed, and Mr. Blake laughed outright.

Fred followed his chum and Barry Gray up the aisle with rather a lagging step. He felt his own importance considerably, and he did not see why he should be as respectful as Bobby was to the captain of Rockledge School.

In a very few minutes Master Martin felt better. The other boys were a lot more friendly than Bill Bronson and Jack Jinks, who the chums learned later, were two of the most troublesome boys at the school. Not many of the others liked the bullies.

There were some fellows quite as young as Bobby and Fred, but none of them were "greenies," like the chums from Clinton.

"Sure you'll have to be hazed!" explained a fat, genial boy, named Perry Wise – called "Pee Wee" because of his initials and his size. "Every fellow has to, that comes to the school. But Barrymore Gray won't let them go too far. He's a nice fellow, he is."

"I think he is fine," said Bobby, enthusiastically.

"He's pretty fresh, I guess," grumbled Fred.

"We don't call the captain of the school fresh," said Pee Wee. "He has a right to boss us. The Doctor lets him. Next to the teachers, Barry's got more to say about things in the school than anybody else."

This did not please Master Martin much. He wanted to be of some importance himself, and he had never been used to giving in to other boys, unless it was to Bobby Blake.

However, there was so much to hear, and so many new people to get acquainted with that Fred had little time to worry about Barry Gray. The chums found the time passing so quickly that they were surprised when the train slowed down and the brakeman shouted, "All out for Rockledge!"

There was no crowd of boys and no band. Rockledge was a busy town, with oak-shaded streets, great bowlders thrusting their heads out of the vacant lots, and much blasting going on where new cellars were being excavated.

There was an electric car line through the middle of High Street, which turned off at the shore of the lake (they learned this afterward) and went as far as Belden.

Bobby and Fred, with Mr. Blake, took a car on this line and crossed the railroad, finally bringing up within sight of the grounds of Rockledge School.

It was not a large school, and there were only four buildings, including the gate-keeper's cottage where all of the outside servants slept. It had once been a fine private estate, and Dr. Raymond had made of it a most attractive and homelike institution.

The doctor and his family, and his chief assistant, lived in a handsome house connected with the main building of the school by a long, roofed portico. This last building was of brick and sandstone, and held classrooms, dining-rooms, the kitchen department in one end of the basement, and a fine gymnasium in the other.

In the upper stories were a hall, two large dormitories in each of which were beds for twenty boys, and five small dormitories for two boys each. The ten highest scholars occupied these small rooms, and from them was chosen the captain of the school each June.

The junior teachers slept in this big building, too.

There were beautiful lawns, fine shrubs, winding, shaded walks, and a large campus on which were a baseball diamond, a football field, and courts for tennis, basket-ball, and other games.

These facts Bobby and Fred gradually absorbed. At first they were too round-eyed to appreciate much but the fact that the place seemed large, and that there positively was an immense number of boys! Fifty boys seemed to have swelled to a hundred and fifty – and they all stared at the newcomers.

Mr. Blake went immediately to the doctor's study, taking Bobby and Fred with him. Dr. Raymond was a tall, big-boned man, wearing very loose garments and a collar a full size too large. The big doctor had bushy side-whiskers, and his chin and lip were very closely shaved. He had white, big teeth, and he showed them all when he smiled.

His eyes were kindly, and wrinkles appeared around them when he smiled, in a most engaging fashion. When he shook hands with Bobby and Fred, some magnetic feeling passed from the big man to the boys, so that the latter decided on the instant that they liked Dr. Raymond!

"Manly little fellows – both," said the doctor, to Mr. Blake, as the two gentlemen walked toward the big windows at the end of the room, leaving Bobby and Fred marooned, like two castaway sailors, on a desert isle of rug near the door.

The doctor's study was enormously long, with a high ceiling, and lined with books, save where a fireplace broke into the bookshelves on one side. There was a very large flat-topped desk, too, several deep chairs, and a number of smaller tables at which the older boys sometimes did their lessons.

"You'll find them just as full of fun and mischief as a couple of chestnuts are of meat," said Mr. Blake, with a chuckle. "But I don't think there is a mean trait in either of them. My boy has had, we think, rather a good influence over Freddie Martin. The latter's red hair is apt to get him into trouble."

"I understand," said the doctor, nodding and smiling. "I try to leave the boys much to themselves in the matter of deportment. The bigger boys are supposed to set the standard of morals, and I am glad to say that I have never yet had occasion to be sorry for beginning that way.

"We run Rockledge School on honor, sir. Every year – in June – we present to the boy who earns it, a gold medal stating that for the past year he has shown himself to be worthy of distinction above his fellows in a strictly honorable way.

"This medal is not given for scholarship – yet none but a fairly studious boy may earn it. It is not given for deportment strictly – though no boy who is not gentlemanly and of manly bearing and action, can win it. The medal is not given for mere popularity, for a boy may sometimes be popular with his fellows, without having many of the fundamental virtues of character which we hope to see in our boys.

"The boy who won it last year, and is gone from us now, stood ninth in his class only, and was not much of an athlete – which latter tells mightily among the boys themselves, you know. Yet my teachers and myself, as well as the school, were practically unanimous in the selection of Tommy Wardwell as the recipient of the Medal of Honor."

The gentlemen talked some few minutes longer. Then Mr. Blake came to bid Bobby and Fred good-by. He shook hands gravely with his own son and then took Fred's hand.

"You've got some trouble, some fun, and a lot of work before you, Master Fred," he said. "I expect your father and mother will be anxiously waiting for good reports about you."

Then he looked at Bobby again. That youngster was having great difficulty in "holding in." His father was going away – and going to a far country. Thousands of miles would separate them before they would meet again.

"You got anything to say to me, Bobs?" asked 'Mr. Blake, briskly.

"Ye – yes, sir!" gasped Bobby. "I – I got to kiss you before you go, Pa!" and he flung his arms around Mr. Blake's neck and for a minute was a baby again.

He knew that Fred would think such a show of emotion beneath him, and he saw the doctor looking at him curiously. Just the same, Bobby Blake was glad – oh, how glad! – many and many a time thereafter that he had bade his father good-by in just this way.

CHAPTER XI
GETTING ACQUAINTED

Pee Wee was the boy who first "took up" the chums from Clinton. The fat boy sat on the steps of the doctor's house, idly whistling and twiddling his fingers when Bobby and Fred came out. Perry Wise never stood when he could sit, and never walked when he could stand, and never ran when walking would get him to his goal just as well. He was the picture of peace just now.

"Hello, fellows!" he said.

"Hello!" returned Bobby.

"Is the Old Doc goin' to let you stay?" grinned the fat boy.

"Huh! why shouldn't he?" demanded Fred, quick to take offense.

"Cause you're so terrible green," chuckled Pee Wee. "They let the sheep loose sometimes to crop the lawn, and they might eat you."

"Aw – you're too smart," said the abashed Fred.

Bobby only laughed. He was glad to have his mind taken up by something beside the fact of his father's going away.

"Say!" said Pee Wee, cordially. "Don't you want to look over the place?"

"We'd be very glad to," admitted Bobby.

Pee Wee made no effort to rise at first. He merely bawled after another boy who was some distance away:

"Hey, Purdy! Don't you want to beau the greenhorns around?"

Fred Martin doubled his fist again and scowled at the placid fat boy, but Bobby warned him by a shake of the head. The boy addressed, who was smaller than Pee Wee, but who was well out of his reach, turned and made a face at the fat boy, saying:

"Do your own work, Fatty. Don't try to put it off on me."

Pee Wee was quite unmoved by this rough retort. He looked around and hailed another lad:

"Jimmy Ailshine! come on and show the newsies all the lions, will you?"

"For why?" demanded the boy addressed.

"Aw – well – I have a stone bruise," explained Pee Wee, hesitatingly.

"You must have it from sitting so much, then," declared Jimmy, with a loud laugh. "You better take them around yourself, or the captain will be after you."

"You needn't show us about if it is very, very painful," suggested Bobby, beginning to understand the fat boy now.

"Guess we can find our way around alone," grunted Fred.

"Aw well! we won't row about it," said Pee Wee, getting up slowly. "But that stone bruise – "

However, the trouble in question seemed, later, to be of a shifting nature, for first Pee Wee favored his right foot and then his left.

It must be confessed that Perry Wise was a very lazy boy, but he was a good natured one, and when once the exploration party was started, he played the part of show-master very well indeed.

They went through the school rooms and up to the dormitories first. In the second dormitory, where the smaller boys slept, in a pair of twin beds in one corner, Bobby and Fred were billeted.

"And no pillow fights, or other ructions, after 'lights out,' unless you ask the captain first," warned Pee Wee.

"Seems to me this captain has a lot to say around here," growled Fred.

"You bet he has. And what he says he means. And it's not healthy for anybody to do a thing when he says 'don't.'"

"Why not?" queried Master Fred.

Pee Wee grinned. "You try it if you like," he said. "Then you'll find out. Dr. Raymond says experience is the surest, if not the best, teacher."

The dormitory was a big, light room, cheerfully furnished, with a locker beside each bed for the boy's clothes and personal possessions, and a chair at the head of the bed.

That wall-space over the heads of the beds was considered the private possession of each couple, for the flaunting of banners, photographs, strings of birds-eggs, shells, pine-cone frames, and a hundred other objects of virtu dear to boyish hearts.

"You see, we can hang up a lot of stuff, too, when our trunks come," whispered Fred to Bobby, pointing to the blank spaces over their beds, lettered only with the names: "Blake" and "Martin."

"You can see clear across the lake from the window here," drawled Pee Wee, lolling on a sill.

The chums came to see. Lake Monatook was spread before them – a beautiful, oval sheet of water, with steep, wooded banks in the east, and sloping yellow beaches of sand at the other end.

Where the Rockledge School stood, a steep sandstone cliff dropped right down to a narrow beach, more than fifty feet below. A strong, two-railed fence guarded the brink of this cliff the entire width of the school premises, save where the stairs led down to the boat-house.

In the middle of the lake were several small islands, likewise wooded. The lake was quite ten miles long, and half as wide in its broadest part.

Across from Rockledge School was the village of Belden. On a high bluff over there the new boys saw several red brick buildings among the trees.

"That's Belden School," explained Pee Wee. "We have to beat them at football this fall. We did them up at baseball in the spring. They're a mean set of fellows anyway," added the fat boy. "Once they came across here and stole all our boats. We'll have to get square with them for that, some time."

"Come on," said Fred, who had begun to enjoy pushing the fat boy, now – knowing that he had been set the task of showing them around – and was determined to keep their guide up to the mark. "We don't want to stay here till bedtime, do we?"

"Aw-right," returned Pee Wee, with a groan. "That's my bed next to yours, Blake. Mouser Pryde is chummed on me this year. We call him Mouser because he brought two white mice with him to school when he first came.

"Shiner and Harry Moore have the beds on your other side. Shiner's the chap you saw down stairs – Jimmy Ailshine. He's a good fellow, but awfully lazy," remarked the fat boy, with a sigh.

"What do you call yourself?" demanded Fred, rather impolitely.

"Oh, me? I'm not well – honest. And that stone bruise – "

It was then he began to favor the other foot, and Bobby giggled. Pee Wee looked at him solemnly. "What are you laughing at?" he asked.

Bobby pointed out that the stone bruise seemed to have shifted.

"Aw, well! it hurts so bad I feel it in both feet," returned the fat boy, grinning. "Come on."

They went down to the gymnasium. It was a dandy! Bobby and Fred saw that it was a whole lot better than the one Mr. Priestly had for his Boys' Club in the Church House at home.

Then they inspected the outside courts, the ball field, and the cinder track – which was an oval, on the very verge of the cliff.

They met boys everywhere, and Pee Wee told them the names of some of them, while a few of about their own age stopped to speak to Bobby and Fred.

Jack Jinks and the yellow-haired youth, Bill Bronson, came up to the trio of smaller boys as they stood by the railing that defended the cliff's brink.

"So you're showing the greenies around, are you, Fatty?" proposed Jack. "Shown them the stake where the Old Doctor ties up fresh kids and gives them nine and thirty lashes if they as much as whisper in class?"

"Yes," said Pee Wee, nodding. "And I showed them the straps there where you were tied up last term, Jinksey."

"Aw – smart, aren't you?" snarled the squint-eyed boy, while Bill Bronson grinned.

"This red-headed chap's going to be a favorite – I can see that," said Bill, rolling the cap on Fred's head with one hand, but pressing hard enough to hurt.

"Let go of me!" cried Fred, hotly, jerking away.

"Don't you get too presumptuous, sonny," advised the yellow-haired youth. "There's lots of chance for you to get into trouble here."

"If I get into trouble with you," snapped Fred, "it won't all be on one side."

"Keep still, Fred!" said Bobby. "Let's come on away," and he tugged at his chum's sleeve.

"That's a pretty fresh kid, too," said Jack, eyeing Bobby with disfavor.

But the trio of younger boys withdrew. "Those fellows," said Pee Wee, "are always picking on fellows they think they can lick. If you don't toady to them, they'll treat you awfully mean!"

"I won't toady to anybody – not even to that captain," declared Fred.

"What! Barry Gray?" cried Pee Wee, in surprise.

"Yes. I don't like him – much," confessed the belligerent Fred.

"You'll be dreadfully lonesome, then," chuckled the fat boy. "For 'most every fellow in the school likes Barry. He's captain of the baseball team, and center in the football team. He can do anything, Barry can. And the Old Doctor thinks he is about right. He was next choice after Tommy Wardwell last year for the Medal of Honor, and he'll likely get it this year."

"What's the Medal of Honor?" asked Fred, curiously.

Pee Wee grinned. "It's something that no red-headed boy ever won," he declared, mysteriously.