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Sam learns his lesson; his mates learn theirs. Incidentally, they undergo trials of the flesh and of the spirit, and are the better for both. They meet adventure which, it is hoped, will be found to the taste of the friends the chums have made and may make through this volume and those which are to follow it.

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PAGE His New Comrade was Racing Across the Fields “Grin and Bear It” 70 “You Can’t Raise the Money” 160 Another of His Precious Matches 248 “We’ll Have to Drift Ashore Somewhere” 320

The Safety First Club

and the Flood

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It was not a cheerful afternoon. Overhead were heavy, gray clouds, and underfoot was snow, long fallen, crusted by alternate thawing and freezing, dingy with the queer winter dust, which comes from nobody knows exactly where. In the beaten track of the roadways was an icy surface, made still more slippery by a thin coating, at once grimy and greasy, offering easy traction for the sledges, piled high with wood, which now and then came crunching along the streets. But it was full of peril to the motor cars, a few of which were abroad, skidding wildly at corners in spite of chained tires and careful driving. Out in the fields the snow was perhaps a foot deep. Where paths had been shoveled the long mounds beside the walks rose almost to the waist of a man of average height. Altogether, it was a typical February scene in Plainville, a town well to the north, accustomed to hard winters and making the best of one of them, scarcely enjoying the experience but accepting it as inevitable.