As she approached it she noticed, even in her anxiety, wide bands of bright red high up on the tree-trunks at intervals. She learned later that these were to indicate the path as well as might be, for a distance on either side of it so that no arrow or missile of any sort should be shot across it. It was one of several precautions to guard against the breaking of this inviolable rule. The path was sacred territory.
Mrs. Bennett was now within the outskirts of the camp and could smell the savory odor of cooking. She passed the tree where the Silver Foxes had spiked a piece of birch-bark with S. F. chalked upon it to indicate that the boys of that patrol were watching the industrious activities of a certain squirrel which patronized that particular tree. Another trunk bore a similar card with R. on it, showing that the Ravens were spying on the private affairs of an oriole which nested above. Little that oriole knew that seven photographs of him were pasted in the Troop Book.
At camp a Red Cross flag had been raised above Mr. Ellsworth’s own tent and except for the quiet comings and going of the scoutmaster himself and Doc Carson, all was quiet here. Mrs. Bennett had expected to find the camp a scene of commotion.
“Good evening, Mrs. Bennett,” said the scoutmaster, in a tone of pleasant surprise. The spider was in his web at last, but he concealed his feeling of elation. “You are just in time to grace the festive board. We’re going to have corn wiggles; did you ever eat a corn wiggle, Mrs. Bennett?”
“Where is my boy?” she demanded.
“Sit down, won’t you? He’s over there learning how to tell a mushroom from a toadstool—something every boy ought to know.”
“And this other boy?” she added, glancing inside the tent.
“Fine-doing fine. One of our boys hiked it to town for a doctor, and I thought you were he when the sentinel told me someone was coming.”
“You saw me coming?”
