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Four Afoot: Being the Adventures of the Big Four on the Highway

Four Afoot: Being the Adventures of the Big Four on the Highway

TO THE READER

Many of you who followed the adventures of Nelson, Dan, Bob, and Tom, as narrated in a previous story, Four in Camp, have very kindly professed a willingness to hear more about this quartette of everyday boys, and the author, who has himself grown rather fond of the “Big Four,” was very well pleased to take them again for his heroes. It seems now as though there might even be a third volume to the series – but that will depend altogether on how well you like this one, for, as of course you understand, the author is writing in an effort to please you, and not himself. And if he doesn’t please you, he would be very glad to have you tell him so, and why.

If you go to searching your map of Long Island for the places mentioned in this story you will be disappointed. They are all there, but, with one or two exceptions, under other names. You see, it doesn’t do to be too explicit in a case of this sort. Mr. William Hooper, for instance, might seriously object were you to stop in front of his house and remark, “Huh! there’s where old Bill Hooper lives, the fellow that wouldn’t give the ‘four’ any supper!” Of course it is different in the case of Sag Harbor – that town has already been immortalized on the stage, and is probably by this time quite hardened to publicity. And as for Jericho – but then they never got there!

Ralph Henry Barbour.

Cambridge, Mass.

CHAPTER I
IN WHICH THE BIG FOUR SET OUT FOR JERICHO

“On to Jericho!”

Dan Speede took the car steps at a bound and was out on the station platform looking eagerly about him before the other three boys had struggled through the car door. Swinging his pack to his shoulders, he waved an imaginary sword about his head and struck an attitude in which his right hand pointed determinedly toward the country road.

“Forward, brave comrades!” he shouted.

The brave comrades, tumbling down the steps, cheered enthusiastically, while the occupants of the car in which the quartet had traveled from Long Island City looked wonderingly out upon them. But as the present conduct of the boys was only on a par with what had gone before, the passengers soon settled back into their seats, and the train puffed on its way. Tom Ferris waved gayly to the occupants of the passing windows and then followed the others along the platform. The station was a small one, and save for a farmer who was loading empty milk cans into a wagon far down the track, there was no one in sight.

“Which way do we go?” asked Nelson Tilford.

For answer Bob Hethington produced his “Sectional Road Map of Long Island, Showing the Good Roads, with Description of Scenery, Routes, etc.,” and spread it out against the side of the station.

“Here we are,” he said. “Locust Park. And here’s our road.”

“That’s all right,” answered Nelson, following the other’s finger. “I see the road on your old map, but where is it on the landscape?”

“Why, down there somewhere. It crosses the track just beyond the station.”

“Certainly, but you don’t happen to see it anywhere, do you?” asked Dan.