The reader also remembers how some of the poorer specimens of High School boys and a few local young "toughs," under the leadership of Fred Ripley and Bert Dodge, tried to drive them from their forest camp.
In the third volume of the series, "_The Grammar School Boys In The Woods_," Dick Prescott and his chums, each now fourteen years of age, found the most startling of all the exciting happenings that had been crowded into their short lives.

How they came upon two dangerous, tattered specimens of humanity in the woods, how these two contrived to make Dick and Greg take unwilling part in an attempt to rob one of the local banks, the mystery of the haunted schoolhouse, and a host of other lively incidents---all these are so familiar to the reader of these volumes as to need no repetition.

And Dick & Co., through the series of exciting adventures they had encountered, had become the best-known boys in and around the little city of Gridley.

Being leaders of other boys, they had naturally made some enemies, but that is to be expected in the case of all who are born to lead, or who fit themselves for leadership.
And now, on this glorious June Sunday afternoon, we find our schoolboy friends enjoying the sacred day quietly, yet looking forward to the opening of the contests on the diamond between the three local Grammar Schools, the North, Central, and South Grammars.
The road they had chosen on this Sunday afternoon was one over which they had seldom traveled.

It was not the road to Norton's Woods, to the great forest, nor yet the one that went by the "haunted schoolhouse." It was in a wholly different direction from Gridley.
"It's a long way home, this," complained Tom Reade, as the boys plodded along the dusty highway.