“Unless I miss my guess, Hugh, we’re going to hear some news worth while. There’s our comrade, Blake Merton, heading this way like a schooner with all sails set. He looks considerably worked up, too. I wonder what ails him? Perhaps something’s happened to keep him from joining the bunch when we start on our hike tomorrow for that camp up near the Pastor farm?”
Hugh, taking a look, remarked calmly:
“We’ll soon know what’s up, for he’s heading our way, and making signals that he wants us to wait for him. I hope it hasn’t anything to do with that case of scarlet fever my folks were talking about this morning, because it happens that the Werner house is close to where Blake lives. If one of his younger sisters came down with the disease they’d have to quarantine the Mertons, and so Blake couldn’t go with us.”
“Wee whiz! that would be tough luck—with vacation just starting in!” the sympathetic Bud went on to say.
“Hello! Hugh!” remarked the newcomer as he arrived, partly out of breath from hurrying so fast, and looking excited as well, “I’ve been searching for you all over town. They put me on several false scents, but I’m awful glad to find you at last!”
“What’s the trouble, Blake?” asked the patrol leader; for, although the Merton boy belonged to the Hawk Patrol, somehow, when he wanted counsel and advice, he turned to the assistant scout master rather than to Walter Osborne, who was the Hawk leader.
Blake glanced toward Bud, and then, as though making up his mind, quickly exclaimed:
“I guess Bud can be depended on to keep a secret as tight as a drum, and so I’m going to speak up. Fact is, Hugh, I’m in a peck of trouble about my cousin, Felix Platt.”
“Oh! I remember that he went away with the battery, being a member of the same,” Hugh observed. “What ails Felix? Has his mother fallen sick, and ought he come home again before being mustered into Uncle Sam’s service?”
Blake Merton shook his head.