Great Hike or, The Pride of The Khaki Troop

A number of active boys were perched high among the heavily laden branches of a big fall pippin apple tree, back of the old Philander Smith house, located just outside the limits of the thriving town of Hickory Ridge. "Take care, Landy!" called out Chatz Maxfield, whose soft, mellow voice told of his Southern birth; "that long ladder might chance to slip, suh, and it would be a long ways to the ground!" "Oh, shucks! I've got the upper end wedged fast in the crotch along the outside of this limb, Chatz. And believe me, I'm getting my basket full of the biggest yellow pippins you ever saw. Who cares for expenses, anyhow?" Landy, whose father owned the property, was very much inclined to be fat; though he would never admit the fact; and was forever declaring he had a new method of exercise that would reduce him to a "living skeleton," sooner or later.