"Oh, how glad I am that you are safe!" cried Dora to Dick, when they met. "It seems an age since you went away."
"So it does—with so much happening," answered the eldest of the Rover boys.
"Are we going home now?" asked Sam.
"We'll have to," answered Tom. "We ought to be at our studies this minute."
"Yes, because you love study so!" cried Nellie, mischievously.
Two days later found them on a river steamer that was to take them up the Mississippi as far as St. Louis, where they were to take the Limited Express for New York.
"Well, I suppose our good times and our adventures are over now," said Sam. But he was mistaken. Good times and strange adventures still awaited them, and what some of these were will be told in the next volume of this series, to be entitled "The Rover Boys on the Farm; or, Last Days at Putnam Hall."
The whole party remained in St. Louis one day. Then they sped eastward on the Limited, and the following evening found them on their way to Valley Brook farm, the Stanhopes and Lanings having decided to stop off there for at least a day or two.
"It will feel fine to get home again," said Sam,
