True to the colonel's promise, the car drew up outside Bardon Station a few minutes before the train which would bring their friends was due. Dick and Chippy sprang from the tonneau, where they had ridden in immense comfort, thanked the chauffeur, bade him good-night, and sought the arrival platform.
''Ow about Mr. Elliott?' said Chippy; 'we ought to tell 'im.'
'Ah, of course!' said Dick. 'He's our instructor, and the colonel said we might tell our parents. At that rate we might tell Uncle Jim.'
'I shan't tell my folks,' said Chippy; 'they wouldn't bother about knowin'. I'll tell Mr. Elliott instead.'
'All right, Chippy,' said Dick. 'Hullo, here's the train!'
Mr. Elliott was very much relieved when the first faces he saw on the platform were those of the missing patrol-leaders. Wolves and Ravens, too, swarmed out and sprang on their lost comrades, and plied them with eager questions. But to each inquirer Dick and Chippy merely said they had been on duty, and come home another way, and the patrols were left mystified and wondering.
'I've got to report to yer, Mr. Elliott,' said Chippy, and took him aside. Now, the patrols thought that this disappearance and reappearance of the leaders was something in connection with the day's movements, and their questions were checked, for discipline forbids prying into the arrangements made by officers.
The instructor was full of delight when he heard how the missing leaders had spent their time. He congratulated both warmly, and said: 'One to the Boys' Scout movement this time. If you hadn't been out on that scouting-run, the plans of the new Horseshoe Fort would have gone abroad as easily as possible. That's playing the game as it ought to be played.'