The Project Gutenberg eBook, Along the Mohawk Trail, by Percy Keese Fitzhugh, Illustrated by Remington Schuyler

ALONG THE MOHAWK TRAIL

National Headquarters
BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA
THE FIFTH AVENUE BUILDING, 200 FIFTH AVENUE
NEW YORK CITY

July 31st, 1913

TO THE PUBLIC:

In the execution of its purpose to give educational value and moral worth to the recreational activities of the boyhood of America, the leaders of the Boy Scout Movement quickly learned that to effectively carry out its program, the boy must be influenced not only in his out-of-door life but also in the diversions of his other leisure moments. It is at such times that the boy is captured by the tales of daring enterprises and adventurous good times. What now is needful is not that his taste should be thwarted but trained. There should constantly be presented to him the books the boy likes best, yet always the books that will be best for the boy. As a matter of fact, however, the boy’s taste is being constantly vitiated and exploited by the great mass of cheap juvenile literature.

To help anxiously concerned parents and educators to meet this grave peril, the Library Commission of the Boy Scouts of America has been organised. EVERY BOY’S LIBRARY is the result of their labors. All the books chosen have been approved by them. The Commission is composed of the following members: George F. Bowerman, Librarian, Public Library of the District of Columbia, Washington, D. C.; Harrison V. Graver, Librarian, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, Pa.; Claude G. Leland, Superintendent, Bureau of Libraries, Board of Education, New York City; Edward F. Stevens, Librarian, Pratt Institute Free Library, Brooklyn, New York; together with the Editorial Board of our Movement, William D. Murray, George D. Pratt and Frank Presbray, with Franklin K. Mathiews, Chief Scout Librarian, as Secretary.

In selecting the books, the Commission has chosen only such as are of interest to boys, the first twenty-five being either works of fiction or stirring stories of adventurous experiences. In later lists, books of a more serious sort will be included. It is hoped that as many as twenty-five may be added to the Library each year.

Thanks are due the several publishers who have helped to inaugurate this new department of our work. Without their co-operation in making available for popular priced editions some of the best books ever published for boys, the promotion of EVERY BOY’S LIBRARY would have been impossible.

We wish, too, to express our heartiest gratitude to the Library Commission, who, without compensation, have placed their vast experience and immense resources at the service of our Movement.

The Commission invites suggestions as to future books to be included in the Library. Librarians, teachers, parents, and all others interested in welfare work for boys, can render a unique service by forwarding to National Headquarters lists of such books as in their judgment would be suitable for EVERY BOY’S LIBRARY.

Signed
James E. West
Chief Scout Executive.

“EACH TIME HE WITHDREW THE STICK, THE BEAST GAINED AN INCH OR TWO.”

EVERY BOY’S LIBRARY—BOY SCOUT EDITION

ALONG THE MOHAWK TRAIL

or

BOY SCOUTS ON LAKE CHAMPLAIN

BY

PERCY KEESE FITZHUGH

ILLUSTRATED BY

REMINGTON SCHUYLER

NEW YORK

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1912,

By THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

[“Each time he withdrew the stick, the beast gained an inch or two”]

[Map of the “Haystack”]

[“‘Hello, what are you doing?’”]

[“‘I never in my life!’ she exclaimed”]

[“He leaned over and seized the sinking figure by the collar”]

MAP OF THE “HAYSTACK”

ALONG THE MOHAWK TRAIL

CHAPTER I
THE NEEDLE IN THE HAYSTACK

Gordon Lord flung his duffel bag into the bench on the station platform and, casting himself precipitately beside it, smiled the smile of the Scouts. It was the genuine, original, warranted scout smile, done to perfection. It had often been remarked of Gordon that when he smiled his lips formed a perfect crescent, so that if the words “Be Prepared” had been printed on his white, even teeth, the effect would have been perfectly natural. Moreover, it was somewhat to his credit that he smiled on the present occasion, for several commuters who were in the same predicament as himself stalked up and down the platform in anything but an amiable humor. One of them was muttering unflattering comments on his chauffeur; another was looking scornfully at the gold watch which had deceived him; two others were discussing the dilatory habits of domestic servants; and the rest were denouncing the railroad.

Only Gordon Lord smiled—and swung his legs back and forth, and smiled more and more. He had made a great sprint down the hill, to no avail, and now, as he sat on the bench pulling up his stocking, which had treacherously worked its way down his leg in the course of his rapid progress, an amusing question presented itself to his original mind; and he resolved then and there to confound Red Deer with it, so soon as he should set eyes on that individual. As every scout in good standing knows, it is his duty to be prepared, to be on hand when he is supposed to be on hand, and to be on time always. But it is also his avowed obligation to do a good turn every day—one good turn, at least. Paragraph 3, Scout’s Law, sets these requirements forth clearly.

And here was Gordon Lord, scout of the second class, who had stopped to do a good turn and as a direct consequence had failed to be prepared. He could not do the good turn and be prepared both; which should he have done? The scout smile broadened as he pondered over this. Here would be a poser for Red Deer. He loved to ask Red Deer such questions as this; it was as good as a circus to hear the two of them engaged in a learned discussion on the technicalities of Scout Law. And Red Deer (who was scoutmaster of the Oakwood troop) enjoyed it immensely.

But now Gordon realized that Red Deer and both patrols, the Beavers and the Hawks, were gliding merrily into the city to catch the Montreal express.

Twenty minutes before his spectacular arrival at the station (one minute after the train had left), he had started from home at “scout pace”—not because this was necessary, but because it was “scoutish” and Gordon was nothing if not thorough. He wore his complete scout outfit; khaki hat, neckerchief showing the Beaver hues (blue and yellow), knotted in the celebrated Beaver knot of his own invention, which had been unanimously adopted by the patrol with a vote of thanks to the inventor. No one but a Beaver could untie the knot except Master Gordon’s mother, who had laboriously discovered the combination one evening when the young Beaver had relieved himself of the scarf by lifting it over his head. His shirt was of a rich, olive-colored flannel, his loose short breeches of khaki, and his khaki-colored stockings were turned over his garters below the knee, whence one or other of them was continually slipping down. He carried his duffel bag on the end of his staff like a peddler with his pack, and as he went down the wide, tree-bordered street of the fashionable suburb of Oakwood, his popularity was attested by many a cheery call or farewell wish from the lawns and porches that he passed.

He was a picturesque figure that early summer morning as he started for the station. He was small and lithe in stature, rather too short for his fourteen years; his complexion was almost of a mulatto brown, and his brown eyes held a kind of dancing mischief. Long before he had entered the scout ranks he was remarked by all as an exceedingly attractive boy, and it needed only the uniform on his compact, active little figure to complete an altogether quaint and charming impression.

Thus he sallied gayly down the hill, past the big family mansion of the Arnolds, and was just turning into the little village park when he came in sight of Miss Leslie, who was in the midst of an exasperating dilemma. Miss Leslie taught in the Oakwood school, and had taught Master Gordon a year or two before. She was at present trying to carry eight rather thick books, which is a very good thing to do when viewed in the light of calisthenics. For it is easier to read eight books than to carry them unless you have a strap or a satchel, and Miss Leslie had nothing but her small white hands.

When Gordon first caught sight of her, his trained scout vision showed him that four books were in Miss Leslie’s arm and four on the sidewalk. She stooped, picked up two and dropped three. She then picked up one and dropped another. Then she picked up two. Then she picked up another one. As she stooped for the last one she dropped three. Matters were about even; at least, she was holding her own. She picked up two more and dropped one. She was one ahead. Encouraged by her success, she made a bold descent for the remaining three, secured two of them and dropped four. The sidewalk had a majority. Miss Leslie glanced covertly up to see if any one were watching. Not seeing the scout as he neared, she cautiously gathered the three books from the sidewalk and for one short, thrilling second held the entire eight under her arm. Then a trifling accident marred her triumph—she dropped one book. With great caution she stooped slowly, grasped the recreant volume, arose victorious, holding it tightly while—the other seven tumbled to the ground.

“Hello, Miss Leslie,” said the young scout.

Miss Leslie, clutching one volume, stood vanquished and humiliated in the midst of the other seven, and contemplated her former pupil with mingled surprise and embarrassment.

“Don’t try to pick them up,” said Gordon; “let me show you something.”

He took the volume which she held and, laying it on the sidewalk, picked up another volume and slipped the front cover of this underneath the cover of the first one. Then he placed the cover of another one underneath the back cover of the second, and so on until he had piled the whole rebellious assortment and effectually locked them together.

“There you are,” said he, and by way of demonstrating the reliability of the pile, he balanced it on his hand, allowing it to incline this way and that like the Leaning Tower. The books held fast as if they were glued together.

“Did you ever in your life?” said Miss Leslie, in complimentary astonishment at this sleight-of-hand performance, and trying to take the books from him.

“There are tricks in every trade,” said Gordon.

“And you know them all,” she answered in genuine admiration.

“But they’re just as heavy as they were before,” he remarked; “I’ll carry them for you as far as the school.”

Her protests were useless, for possession is nine points of the law, and Gordon held the pile of books. So they went along together toward the school building, which was not at all in line with the station, he talking volubly all the way.

“I think you are the boy who once opened a bottle of camphor for me in the school room by means of a piece of string,” she remarked.

“That’s nothing,” said Gordon, who loved to impart information. “Do you know how to open bureau drawers that stick?”

“Indeed, I wish I did,” she answered, smiling.

“Lay a heavy stick on the floor in front of the bureau and hit it a good hard whack with a hammer; if you haven’t a stick, just pound the floor.”

“Really?”

“Honest.”

“Well, that is certainly worth knowing.”

“That’s nothing—did you know you can make dandy ink out of typewriter ribbons?”

“The idea!”

“That’s how I got this suit—asked the stenographers in my father’s office to save me their old typewriter ribbons, made ink and sold it; it’s better than other ink.”

“And is that your scout suit? I heard the boys were starting for camp to-day.”

“Who told you?”

“I think it was Dr. Brent.”

“He’s Red Deer; he’s going with us.”

“And how do you manage to pack so many things in there?” said she, patting his thick, curly hair.

“Oh, there isn’t so much in it,” he answered; “a couple of apples, pair of heavy shoes, a shirt—”

“What?”

“Want to look inside?” he asked, laying the pile of books down and releasing his duffel bag from the end of his staff.

“Oh, no, I meant inside your head,” said she, laughing; “but here we are; I shall remember the things you have told me. Good-by, and I hope your kindness to me will not have made you late for the train.”

She stood on the school steps (it was the last day of the spring term) watching him as he walked gayly down the street, his khaki hat on the back of his round head, and his duffel bag on the end of his scout’s staff. She heard a man across the street call cheerily to him that he had only two minutes to catch the train, and she distinctly heard him answer, “That’s nothing,” and saw him start to run down the hill toward Oakwood station.

But it proved to be a great deal, despite the boy’s laconic comment. Indeed, it is to be seriously questioned whether missing a train ever before had such a variety of delectable consequences.

So there he sat where we first saw him, on the station bench, and thought of the two patrols in charge of Red Deer which were already on their way to the Adirondacks. They knew that he had had a bad headache the day before, and they would doubtless assume that to be the cause of his non-appearance. He pictured their gay trip up the shore of the lordly Hudson, their luncheon at Albany, their leaving the train at Ticonderoga and tramping forth in quest of a suitable camp. But whether they would settle north or south or west of Ticonderoga, he did not know. They would pitch their tents this very night somewhere along the shore of that watery serpent, Lake Champlain, but exactly where Red Deer would lead them would depend largely on information gathered en route.

He wondered what Arnold would think of him. Those had been fine plans that he and Arnold had made for hanging together and testing their new signal system, and tracking and stalking in each other’s company. It was Harry Arnold who had brought Gordon into the troop as a tenderfoot, and it had been a great discovery for the elder boy. It had also opened up a field for Master Gordon which belittled his fondest dreams. For even before the organization came into existence he was, in all essential particulars, a thorough, out-and-out Boy Scout. And indeed, it might reasonably have seemed to him that the local troop had been organized in order to afford a wider scope for the exploitation of his particular accomplishments.

His laconic phrase of “That’s nothing,” when confronted with difficulties, had come to be a familiar quotation among his intimates, and he retained the expression after he blossomed forth with his staff and badge and khaki attire. He could shoot a curve with a marble; he could tell in which direction a bicycle had gone by its track; he was a master worker in birch bark; he could make washers and other useful articles of hardware by the aid of the railroad track; he could kindle an open air fire in a pelting rain; he was the sole inventor of the celebrated suction-pad for walking on narrow cliffs and ledges; and he had memorized the Oakwood fire-signal system.

A whistle had been recently installed on the Town House, which uttered an unearthly din whenever there was a fire in town. If it rang ten it meant one locality; if it rang fifteen it meant another, and thus every street and corner of the town was provided for. Whenever the whistle blew, there was frantic hunting in every Oakwood home for the card which showed the various locality calls. Of course, it is absolutely important that a boy shall attend a fire, and Gordon at once realized that to memorize the entire system would enable him always to be first on the scene. Hence, if he happened to be walking along the street and heard the screech of the whistle sounding 57, he knew at once in which direction to go, and it was not uncommon for him to be waiting for the firemen to point them out the house. Also in school when the lessons were interrupted by the whistle’s ominous sound, the teacher, after fumbling in her desk in a vain quest for the elusive card, would say, “Perhaps Master Gordon can tell us;” and Master Gordon would promptly answer, “Elm St. near Park Place.”

He knew the number of paving stones between his home and the corner; he knew how to locate a baseball in a drain pipe; he could look at a kite caught on a telegraph wire and tell you approximately where the flier of the kite had stood when the mishap occurred; he knew just how far it was to the Guild Room, to the church, to the public library. He loved such little tidbits of information for their own sake, and like all wide-awake boys, he had a habit of finding things.

You will see that here was the material for an A-1 scout, and when I add that Master Gordon’s only vice (if you call it a vice) was an unconquerable and excessive fondness for apples, you will know enough of his character to last you for a chapter or two.

After the first excitement of missing the train had passed and he had smiled the matter off, scout fashion, he opened his duffel bag and sought consolation in a gigantic and mellow specimen of his favorite fruit. Then he rose and retraced his steps up the hill. There on the summit stood the fine, old-fashioned mansion of the Arnolds, and beyond it a hundred yards or so the more modern residence of the Lord family, standing well back upon its spacious, well-kept lawn.

There was not a soul stirring about the Arnold place, and as he passed it he thought again of the boy whose particular companion he had meant to be. He had a great admiration for Harry Arnold, and Harry, though he jollied the younger boy and called him “Kid,” was quite under the spell of his young friend and protégé.

Surely they would write to him and tell him where they were and how to get to them; Arnold would attend to that. But perhaps Arnold did not care so much, after all. He knew he furnished a good deal of amusement to his friend, but whether Arnold really cared enough—no, very likely he didn’t. They would all say it was his business to be prepared—to be on hand; Arnold would be the first to say that.

So Master Gordon Lord walked slowly up the quiet, suburban street until the roof of his own home was visible through the trees. He had finished his apple, and he now sent the core spluttering against a tree. The scout smile had gone under a cloud for the time being, for the boy now began to realize the extent of his disappointment. There was not another boy in sight. Ordinarily Arnold would have been mowing the lawn or attending to some other outdoor work about the place at this time; but there was no Arnold in sight now, and he seemed doubly absent because Gordon knew where he had gone. Then his disappointment began to take the form of anger, and even his anger was not well-directed, for it included the very boy who had made him a scout and who had helped him into the second class. But the thought that both patrols would soon be rushing gayly up the Hudson while he trudged homeward in an almost boyless Oakwood was too much for him, and he sat down on a rock along the stretch of road between his own home and the Arnold house and blamed them all and told himself that Arnold was a “lobstereen”—whatever may be the meaning of that dreadful appellation.

Now there are many ways in which a man may afford a vent to his anger, but the very best way for a boy to do so and by far the most satisfactory is to choose a suitable target at an appropriate distance and to sit down on a rock or log and proceed to pelt it with stones. For with every cast of a missile goes a certain quantity of the unwholesome spirit till it has all been dissipated in the free air. The first stone is usually thrown in wrath, the next several in a kind of sullen carelessness, and lo, the marksman presently finds himself captured by the sporting instinct and aims, calmly and cheerfully, at his target with no feeling but the sportsmanlike desire to hit the mark. This method is strongly recommended to boys and its effects will be found to be immediate and magic.

On the present occasion Gordon Lord passed quickly through the wrathful and sullen stages and rose with characteristic determination and a sure aim. You cannot aim true when you are angry, and at the present moment Gordon cared more about hitting the mark than about anything else. Presently the stone sped from his hand and went banging against the slender tree.

“Good shot!” he heard a cheery voice call.

Gordon turned, and there, as sure as you live, stood Arnold.

There was no doubt about it. There was the blue flannel shirt with the double row of pearl buttons. There was the thin book-strap for a belt, and there was the full scout’s badge, not on his sleeve, but on the front of his hat. There was the seamanship badge on his right arm. There was the Beaver neckerchief tied in the celebrated Beaver knot. There was the leather wristlet. It was Arnold, all right.

“H-hello, Harry,” gasped Gordon; “what—where did you come from?”

“Where did I come from? Why, from the station—on a fool hunt after you. What are you doing here, anyway?”

“Just throwing stones.”

“Do you know you’ve missed the train?”

“I knew that fifteen minutes ago.”

“Well, you’re a—”

“No, I’m not, Harry,—now just hold on a minute,—I started down—”

“Yes,” said Arnold, crossly, “and I waited till five minutes before train time, then cut up through the fields to your house.”

“If you’d only come up by the park, you’d have seen me showing Miss Leslie—honest, Harry, you ought to have been there. She was trying to juggle eight books down to school and most of them were on the sidewalk. So there was the chance for your Uncle Gordon. I happened to know a trick—”

“I know,” interrupted Arnold, smiling in spite of himself, “you showed her a way.”

“Right.”

“Did a good turn.”

“Right for Harry.”

“And missed the train.”

“Correct.”

Gordon took a careful aim and sent another stone to the mark.

“And you did a good turn, too, Harry; a bully one, coming to find me. You’ve started the day fine.”

“Yes, we’ve made a grand starter,” said Arnold, as they sauntered toward his home. “We’re a couple of A-1 scouts—not. The whole troop will be laughing at us.”

“But remember the good turns, Harry.”

“I don’t see us doing any stalking together,” was the reply.

“Do you know how I fixed those books for her, Harry?”

“No, and I don’t want to know.”

They walked on in silence to the Arnold place, and Gordon followed his somewhat disgruntled friend to the latter’s room. It was familiar ground to him, for much of their planning and preparation had taken place in it, and now he threw himself into the comfortable recess of a Morris chair and tactfully awaited some sign of improvement in his companion’s humor. Meanwhile, Harry made a tour around his well-filled apartment, rearranging things and collecting the boyish litter, by way of affording a vent to his mood. He took a canoe paddle from one corner and placed it in another. He straightened his school diploma on the wall. His manner was anything but cordial, and Gordon watched him with a twinkle in his eye but did not venture a remark.

“There’s the blazing system,” grunted Harry, throwing a paper over to the bed. “A lot of good it’ll do us now.”

He hammered a nail in the wall and hung a pair of moccasins on it. The nail came out.

“Put it eighteen inches from the door casing, Harry.”

“How’d you know that?”

“Don’t know—just found it out.”

“Well,” said Harry, after a few minutes more of sullen silence, “what are we going to do about it?”

“Do about it?”

“Yes, what are we going to do about it? Hang around in Oakwood for two months?”

“They’ll write.”

“Yes, I suppose they will,” said Harry. “We’ll hear something in a few days. The trouble is they may not know for a few days just where they’re going to settle. You know, they’re going to get out at Ticonderoga and strike up into the woods north. Red Deer spoke of following the old Mohawk trail. I wish I had his map.”

He thrust his hands into his pockets, and stood gazing out of the window. Neither spoke.

“Harry,” said Gordon, at length, “it would be a great stunt for us to go up there and find them.”

“You must be crazy, Kid.”

“Of course, they’ll write and tell us where they are, but that may be a week or more, and when we got to them they’d all laugh at us. Now, if we could just—”

“It’s out of the question, Kid.”

“No, it isn’t either,” persisted Gordon. “Here we are, a couple of scouts—been tracking and stalking and signaling and woodcrafting and all that sort of thing for six months. We know the troop is going to camp along Lake Champlain on the New York side.”

“Lake Champlain’s a hundred and fourteen miles long,” interrupted Harry.

“That’s nothing. We know they’re somewhere along the west shore of that lake—I say, let’s go and find them.”

“Why, you hair-brained kid, it would be like hunting for a needle in a haystack,” said Harry, warming up a little to the idea under the younger boy’s enthusiasm.

“Well, there’s a way to find a needle in a haystack, Harry. You fix a big magnet on the end of a long stick and then begin—”

But that was as far as he got. Harry Arnold sat down on the edge of the bed and laughed himself hoarse. He came out of this fit in much the same condition as one comes out from the crisis of a fever. His ill humor was quite gone and his mood was more agreeable and receptive than it had been since he left the station in quest of his delinquent friend.

“It would be a great thing,” said he, “only—”

“There’s no only about it, Harry. It can be done and we can do it. We’ll start before there’s a chance to hear. No sirree! They’ll not have the laugh on me. We’ll drop in on them some fine day as if we’d dropped from the clouds.”

The attractive features of the scheme began rapidly to appeal to the older boy. It was all very well tracking and stalking in the Oakwood woods, where any member of the troop could take his bearings by the church steeple. It was all very well pretending to be lost. It was a good enough makeshift to think up emergencies, to make them to order, and then gallantly to surmount them by a knowledge of woodcraft. But here was a real test for their ability, their endurance, their sagacity, their observation, resource, and experience. A Saturday afternoon grapple with the little patch of Oakwood woods was like a bout with a punching bag—the exercise was good, but the element of uncertainty and real peril was absent. For a punching bag cannot hit back. And after all they had only been playing a game in which Nature—the opponent—had been frightfully handicapped. She had held no surprises for them and presented no obstacles. The difficulties they had overcome had been manufactured for that especial purpose. They had pretended to be lost—but they could hear the Town House bell every half-hour. No, the whole thing seemed tame beside the enchanting picture of a real encounter with Nature up among the rugged foothills of the Adirondacks.

There, along the winding course of Lake Champlain, somewhere within hail of its shore and nestling among the hills that flank it—somewhere in that wilderness would be encamped the two patrols of the Oakwood scouts. And shielding them and baffling the searchers would be the swamps, the mountains, the valleys, and the strange, dim woods. Here would be a foeman worthy of their steel, and beside it the modest, familiar little patch of woodland that skirted their suburban home seemed pitiably small. So that Gordon very truthfully remarked:

“Honest, Harry, I feel as if I’d been hitting a fellow under my size.”

Was there a way? What weapons had they with which to encounter this great silent, enveloping foe, and make it yield up its secret? The wilderness, the hills and streams, the swamps and thickets, must pay the cost of the encounter and sustain them in their quest. They would lay the enemy under contribution for their maintenance.

They talked it over, warming to the idea as new obstacles presented themselves. They likened themselves to Stanley hunting for Livingstone in South Africa. And they told each other what Red Deer would think when he saw them come walking in—which, of course, they would do in a very nonchalant and offhand manner, as if they had just happened in for a little social call.

“It’ll be great,” said Gordon.

“After all,” said Arnold, more thoughtfully, “we can’t get lost if we have a compass. A fire with damp leaves on it is as good as a telephone, and—”

“Of course it is,” said Gordon.

“You can’t freeze if you’ve got a match.”

“You don’t need a match, Harry—there’s a way—”

“Yes, there’s always a way when you’re along, Kid.”

So they talked over the pros and cons of the proposed undertaking, taking account of all they had learned of woodcraft, and gloating over the surprise they would give Red Deer and the two patrols, until finally, from mere excess of enthusiasm, they sat silent, contemplating the variety of opportunities which the expedition would present for the testing of their resource and woodcraft skill.

“Kid,” said Harry Arnold, “the troop can be found wherever they are. We can reduce the area a good deal by deduction at the very start. We know they’ll be on the New York shore not far from the lake. It’ll be the greatest thing in the world for us to go up there and find them, and by the powers, I’m going to do it if I—”

“Oh, Harry, let’s start to-night!” said Gordon.

CHAPTER II
A GLIMPSE AT THE HAYSTACK

Harry Arnold was eighteen years old, and, as you may have noted from the position of his badge and the color of his scarf, he was leader of the Beaver patrol. He was tall, lithe, and active, and, without being exactly an athlete, he gave the impression of being athletic.

There was a certain indescribable something in his appearance which suggested the out-of-door life rather than a gymnasium training, and it is a fact that he seldom did a thing simply and solely because it would make him strong. There was nothing of the athletic faddist about him, and it was said by some of the Oakwood boys that he was not much of a sport. Of course, that depends on what you call sporting, but it must be confessed that he took but slight interest in games—as such. He liked to see a good kick on the gridiron, a good ball pitched; he enjoyed seeing a boy catch a “sky-scraper” or watching a home run. But whether the pitcher, runner, or catcher wore a white suit or a blue suit or a red suit, or the initial A or B or any other letter, made little difference to him.

He was not much given to talking (his friend Gordon attended to that), but he was fond of saying, “The question is, what can a fellow do, not whom can he beat?” He was not particularly fond of either football or baseball but, if I can make the distinction clear, he was fond of each feature of these games for its own sake independently of results. It made several of his companions quite impatient when he calmly protested, on his way home from the baseball field one day, that the visiting team which had just been beaten by the Oakwood High School had really done the best work.

“Well, we beat them anyway, and that’s how I judge,” said Collins. And that, indeed, is the way most boys judge. But Arnold had watched each individual play apart from its connection with the game as a whole, and he persisted that the visitors had done the best work.

Perhaps we can get at it best by saying that he had the true sporting instinct, but lacked the spirit of the contestant. He saw a difference between the word “success” and the word “victory.” It was a grand, inspiring thing to see a home run—never mind which side scored.

He cared nothing for dumb-bells, Indian clubs, elastic exercisers, and such. He loved the woods and the water, and the things he loved to do made him strong and enduring. “You cannot get up much of an affection for dumb-bells and Indian clubs,” he said; “so they don’t do you much good.”

I don’t know that I wholly agree with him in this, but I think I catch his idea, which is sound and wholesome. At all events, we must take him as we find him.

He was inordinately fond of boating, and had walked away with the seamanship badge so easily that it seemed a shame for him to take it. He gave the examiners good measure in all the tests and threw in several feats gratis. He could ride a canoe as a cowboy rides a mustang, and had come alone in one of those little shells from Block Island to New York, straight through Long Island Sound, in November.

He was thoughtful and far-sighted, and studious in regard to matters that interested him specially. In his seamanship test he had voluntarily drawn a plan of a turbine engine, giving also a description of its advantages in sea navigation. What he knew, he knew thoroughly, and the thing that interested him most, next to wood lore and outdoor life and boating, was Gordon Lord.

That loquacious Beaver, with his head stuffed full of a variety of useful and semi-useful information, furnished him a source of never ending amusement which had blossomed into a genuine attachment for the younger boy. “Kid,” he would say, “the inside of your head reminds me of a rummage sale or an old attic. Why don’t you get busy and clear it out some rainy Saturday?”

And Gordon would answer, “Because then I wouldn’t have anything to make you laugh with when you get a grouch on. See?” And this, perhaps, may afford a hint as to why the two had been drawn together.

It now became the first duty of Harry Arnold to encounter his young friend’s father and surmount, if might be, the difficulty of parental objection to the proposed undertaking. This he could not do until evening, but he knew enough to know that he was going to talk to a business man and that it behooved him to be prepared. Of his own father’s consent he had no doubt.

Mr. Lord had a great admiration for Harry. His shrewd business habit of keen observation had long since shown him that here was a boy who was adventurous but not visionary. He admired the lad’s straightforward, self-possessed way of talking. He had even been favorably impressed with the moderate and discriminate use of slang which characterized his conversation.

“Just enough to make what he says pithy and vivid,” he told Gordon. “You never hear him use senseless expressions or words that have no meaning—I like to talk to him.” In short, he was well pleased with the intimacy between the two boys, for he felt that Harry was an admirable companion for his own impulsive son.

Harry started at once for the city, where he procured from a sporting outfitter just what he wanted and no more, which is not always an easy thing to do. This was a government survey map of the Lake Champlain country. If there had been time he might have gotten this from Uncle Sam at the moderate price of five cents; as it was, it cost him a dollar.

The afternoon he spent in his room alone, studying the map. Gordon’s alluring picture of dropping in on the troop unexpectedly some fine day did not divert him from a calm and thoughtful consideration of the chances of success or failure. Of course, the idea of going up there and searching them out by the application of wit, persistence, and resource appealed strongly to his spirit of adventure. But he was not going to allow himself to be too hopeful. He saw that if they started at Ticonderoga and journeyed north in a direct line they would be, generally speaking, on high ground, whence they could keep the lake in view as well as the two miles, approximately, which would intervene between themselves and the water.

In other words, his plan would be to start at the foot of Lake Champlain and follow the ridge of high land which ran parallel with the lake about two miles west of it. He saw that here and there along the route were high elevations whence they might obtain excellent surveys of the shore line and the country between. A few days’ tramping and climbing would enable them to pick out the camp if it were in open ground. But he realized that it probably would not be in open ground.

The only definite knowledge they would start with as to the troop’s camping place was as follows:

They were to start at Ticonderoga and press north.

They were to camp on the New York side of the lake.

They would remain in proximity to the lake.

They would, probably, not go north of Port Henry, which was, roughly speaking, fifteen miles above Ticonderoga.

That left a tract of country fifteen miles long and from two to three miles wide to be explored. The long sides of this rolling, wooded rectangle were bounded respectively by the ridge and the long stretch of lake shore. But the ridge was not continuous and well defined, and its constant availability for outlook was, of course, not to be depended on. Indeed, to the average eye the map would have shown no ridge at all. But Harry picked it out, following the contour linings and altitude notations, and saw it as if it were a grand stand. He knew enough of woodcraft to know that a searcher must keep to the high ground, and he did not make the mistake of supposing that the thing to do would be to follow the shore.

He took a lead pencil from his ear. It was the first weapon to be used and he knew its value. Then and there, in the seclusion of his own room, he began the search for the needle in the haystack.

He knew that certain things could be eliminated by deduction and that it was best to eliminate them before he tripped over them. He marked the imaginary rectangle on his map. Then he studied it as if it were a chess-board and he a player. He knew that the chances were strongest for finding the troop encamped toward the southern end of his rectangle, because when they found the sort of place they were after why should they go farther? There was a river rising somewhere in Keeny Mountain and making its way into the lake about three miles north of Ticonderoga. Very likely they would not be north of that, for why should they not camp along the first river they came to? They would probably not be remote from a road. If they followed up the lake, they would cut in west a little below the river because there was a swamp. If they did this, they would buck right into the river on high ground about one mile in from the lake. If conditions there were as he thought they were, that would mark the general locality of their camp. For people, like rivers, follow the path of least resistance. Harry judged what Dr. Brent would do by considering what he would do. He let the rectangle stand as he had marked it, but he interested himself most in its lower end.

There was a ring at the door-bell.

“If that’s Kid Lord,” he called out, never looking up from the map, “tell him if he comes up here, he’s got to keep quiet.”

But it was not Kid Lord, for Kid Lord was otherwise engaged.

That evening, Harry rolled up his map and went up to the Lord house. Mr. Lord was standing on the lawn watching the activities of a new revolving sprinkler.

“Hello, Harry, my boy,” said he, cordially. “Well, you and Gordon are a couple of A-1 scouts, aren’t you? You made a great botch out of getting off!”

“I think we can find them, Mr. Lord,” said Harry, as they walked toward the porch and seated themselves in two large wicker chairs.

“I don’t know about that, Harry,” said Mr. Lord, seriously. “I’m afraid it’s too much of an undertaking. Dr. Brent will manage to get word to you boys, as I told Gordon—you needn’t be afraid of that. He’ll have one of the boys arrange to meet you somewhere—the nearest station—and—”

“And they’ll all laugh at us.”

“What do you care for that?”

“Well, I don’t know that I do, sir, but it would be a lot of fun to find them.”

“That’s what Gordon says, but now just think a minute, my boy. You propose to roam around through those woods, tramp up mountains, walk through swamps for maybe two weeks or more, simply for the pleasure of stealing quietly up to their tents some day and calling, ‘Peek-a-boo.’ I don’t think the game’s worth the candle, now, do you?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“What’s that you’ve got?”

“That’s a map I want to show you,” answered Harry, unrolling it and spreading it on his knee; “I guess maybe Gordon has an idea that we’re going into a country like the wilds of Africa, but it isn’t quite as bad as that. Of course, there are wild tracts, but there are roads and villages, and then there’s the lake to keep us from going too far astray. I’m pretty sure we’ll find camp near the lake. Now, my idea is to follow this ridge—”

“What ridge?”

“Why, right along here,” said Harry, pointing with his pencil.

“You call that a ridge?”

“Yes, sir; those are all mountains, and the high land is more or less continuous. It’ll give us a bird’s-eye view.”

“Now, let me tell you something, my boy. It’s easy to climb a mountain on a map. But a few curlicue lines aren’t a mountain—no sirree—any more than a bill of fare is a dinner. Now, take my advice and do the comfortable, easy way. Stay right here till you get word from Dr. Brent.”

“It would be good sport,” protested Harry.

“I know, but suppose you shouldn’t find them?”

“Mr. Lord,” said Harry, “if I were working for you in your office and you wanted me to do something, you wouldn’t ask me what would happen if I failed to do it. You would expect me not to fail.”

Mr. Lord gave the boy a quick, approving glance but said nothing, only fell to examining the map.

“Well,” said he, “let’s see how you mean to do.”

“I mean to explore this tract, not every inch of it, of course, but by signals, and so forth. I figure that we’ll find some trace of them along the roads or in the wood trails. Also we can see a good deal of country from these mountains, some of them especially.”

“Suppose you tramped away up a mountain for a grandstand view and found it covered with dense woods?”

“I could climb a tree, but even that won’t be necessary. Do you know how they made this map, Mr. Lord? They had men out surveying the country. On the tops of some of these mountains there must be some old disused government survey stations. Here’s a mountain called Bald Knob, so we know right off there are no woods on it. Here’s Owl Pate—no woods on Owl Pate, I guess. Now this is what I mean to do, sir. I’m going right up that road from Ticonderoga, and if there hasn’t been any rain I can pick out their tracks if they went that way. That’s a stretch of flat country. If we haven’t spotted them by the time we get to Dibble Mountain, we’ll go up and take a look and see what we see. We may send up a Morse smoke signal and like enough that’ll fetch them. If it doesn’t, then on for Crown Point. You see, there’s the village, and no harm can come to us.”

“You could wire me from Crown Point,” suggested Mr. Lord.

“Yes, only we wouldn’t.”

Mr. Lord laughed. “See, there’s a good high mountain, Harry; Bulwagga, is it? Yes, Bulwagga.” He was getting quite into the spirit of the thing, and Harry led him along with the lead pencil, which Mr. Lord’s eyes followed as a needle follows a magnet. “Well, I hope you’ll find them,” he concluded. “I guess you’re equal to it. I wish I were young enough to go along.”

Harry rolled up his map and went up to Gordon’s room. He found that young gentleman in a rather despondent mood.

“What’s the matter, Kid?”

“My father won’t stand for it.”

“Oh, I guess he will; I’ve just been talking to him.”

“What’d he say?”

“Said he wished he was young enough to go along with us. Come on now, get a hustle. We start to-morrow morning.”

CHAPTER III
A GOOD TURN AND A SALUTE

That evening Gordon was doomed to disappointment. From the moment that he learned they might go, his active mind had been busy considering what articles they must take, and most of those he thought necessary were ruthlessly vetoed by his friend. He found that the first delight of the novice in camping and exploring was heartlessly taken from him—the delight of making preparations. There was, in fact, scarce any preparation at all. They spent the evening in Harry’s room, which had much the appearance of a frontier trading-post, so crowded was it with camping paraphernalia and forest mementos.

From these Harry collected a few things, some from the walls, some from bureau drawers, some from a large chest. There was fishing tackle, a practical jewel-set compass, a jack-knife which he carefully selected from several others, a small belt ax, a flat metal trap, several snares, a pair of mooseskin moccasins, a water-tight match box, the necessary toilet articles, a small file, a small aluminum frying pan, a saucepan, a tin cup, a small aluminum coffee pot into which he put two knives, two forks, and two spoons, for Harry’s duffel bag, containing his personal equipment for the trip, had gone on with the troop.

“Now, let me see,” he said, standing beside the bed and contemplating the things he had chosen, “you take this paper and write down what I name—or wait a minute, while I think of it.” He disappeared, and presently returned with a spool of strong thread and two needles stuck into it. This he dropped into the tin cup, then dropped the tin cup into the coffee pot.

“Now write down what I tell you—these are all things we’ve got to get in the morning.

“Two tin plates.

“Bacon.

“Rice—do you like rice? Saccharine tablets. Raisins. Salt and pepper. Egg powder. Got all that down?”

“Yes.”

“All right, the rest will come to me in my sleep. Now let’s see what you’ve got in that fancy bag.” He turned the contents of Gordon’s duffel bag out on the bed. “What in the world is this?”

“That’s a suction pad, Harry.”

“What’s it for?”

“Keep you from falling off cliffs.”

“We’ll cut out the suction pad. Here, eat these apples and get them out of the way. Now, what’s this?”

So he went through the pile of things, approving some, discarding others, yielding here, insistent there, until, as he said, he had reduced Gordon’s freight to a common denominator.

The next morning they started, with a minimum amount of duffel for one week’s supply, the load divided between them. There were crackers of the iron-clad pilot variety; there was rice, which Harry said he could do lots of things with; there were chocolate, cheese, figs, cereal, besides the things Harry had enumerated the night before. Besides these, there was “fly dope,” one or two household medicines, an antiseptic solution, blankets, two empty cushion bags, and a good-sized piece of balloon silk (weighing next to nothing) for shelter.

Harry wore long khaki trousers laced down from the knee, and moccasins of heavy mooseskin. From the belt up, however, he was rather a sailor than a scout, for he had never been able to bring himself to abandon the blue flannel shirt with its flap front and double row of pearl buttons. He positively declined to wear any kind of coat. His belt was a thin book-strap, and from this hung a small belt ax. Of course, he carried his rifle.

Gordon was a scout from head to foot. He would not have missed one detail of the full regalia. He carried his part of the burden in his duffel bag slung over his staff, on which he also ostentatiously hung the trap and snares and to which was bound the fishing rod and tackle.

“You want to do what I did, Harry,” said he on their way to the station. “Rip the lining out of your hat and pull it on good and tight—the felt catches your hair and it can’t blow off.”

“Or pull off either when you’re crawling through brush. It’s a good idea.”

“That’s nothing,” said Gordon. “Look here.” He held his scout hat forward, displaying inside the crown a little flap pocket filled with matches. “See, you can splash through all the water you want, but they’ll never get wet there, and you’ve got them right handy where you want them to light in a breeze.”

“Good for you,” said Harry.

“That’s nothing,” said Gordon.

But just then the train whistled and both boys sprinted down the hill.

The ride to the city was not long, one or two trifling purchases at a sporting goods store where Harry seemed to be well known took but a few minutes, and before ten o’clock they were seated comfortably in the Montreal Express, gliding up the east shore of the Hudson, just as the Oakwood troop, minus these two boys, had gone the day before.

It was Gordon’s custom always to get his good turn done early in the day. He was not going to be caught at sundown with this duty staring him in the face. Not that he confined himself to one good turn per day, for, indeed, he acted on the approved theory that one good turn deserves another. But the first good turn was a religious duty; it was essential to his good standing, and when he undertook to become a scout he understood this to be a regular daily obligation. He did not ask for any credit or indulgence. He never let his good turn go over to be made up the following day by two good turns. He rose in the morning, washed, dressed, breakfasted, did his school work, then looked about for an opportunity to do his good turn.

So now he looked up and down the railroad carriage to see if any one were in need of his kindly ministrations. After a minute, he rose and walked up the aisle, where he stood on the outskirts of a little group consisting of the train newsboy, the brakeman, an elderly lady, and two little girls, evidently her grandchildren. The brakeman was trying to open the window for the elderly lady. But the window would not open. The brakeman, giving up the attempt, went up the aisle and out of the car, and an elderly gentleman offered his services with the same result. The lady was beginning to feel the embarrassment of being such a center of interest. As Harry craned his head around he saw Gordon standing modestly apart from the others, hat in hand.

Presently, the latter came back to his seat and got his staff.

“Did you think of a way?” asked Harry, laughing.

“Can’t tell yet,” said Gordon, as he went back up the aisle.

The car door opened and a sonorous voice called, “Poughkeepsie!”

Gordon stepped in between the seats, placing the end of his staff under the brass lift at the bottom of the sash. As the train slackened speed, he pressed gently on his lever. Suddenly the movement of the train became more abrupt, the cars shunted, there came the slight convulsive movement he had been waiting for, the staff was pressed quickly down just at the right second, the window creaked and rose.

In a moment more he was seated by his friend, volubly explaining the trick.

“If she doesn’t come when the train stops, try again when it starts and often that’ll fetch her. Only you’ve got to be careful to press just exactly at the right second—the physical moment, I think they call it.”

“That’s it,” said Arnold, and turned his face toward the window, laughing.

After they had left Albany there occurred another incident which, though trifling at the time, was destined to be long remembered. They were sitting comfortably back in their seats discussing their plan of campaign, when a boy of about sixteen came through the car. He was dressed in ordinary summer outing fashion save that he wore a scout hat, and as he passed the two boys he raised his right hand to his forehead and made the full salute to Harry. He was one of a long line of people carrying bundles, suitcases, and so forth, who were passing through the aisle, and it would have caused a slight interruption to the others had he paused. Probably for this reason he went straight on through the car and disappeared through the doorway.

“He’s a scout, all right,” said Gordon.

“Yes,” answered Harry, “but this is what puzzles me—how did he know I am entitled to the full salute?”

“From the badge on your hat, of course!”

“Only my hat’s upside down on my knees. Guess again.”

“Well,” said Gordon, “he knew you were a first-class man by your seamanship badge.”

“But how did he know I was patrol leader?”

“Your flag?”

“No—that’s gone on with the troop.”

The only conclusion they could reach was that the strange boy was a wonder. Every now and then they reverted to it, and one or the other would suggest going back through the train to hunt him up and ask him how he knew that Harry Arnold was patrol leader. But they invariably settled back satisfied with the observation that the boy was a “winner” until finally Gordon shouted:

“He saw the badge wasn’t on your sleeve, Harry, so he knew it must be on your hat—there you are!”

“No,” said Harry, “he wouldn’t expect to see it on this flannel shirt—he’d know it belonged on the khaki jacket.”

“Well, he’s a Sherlock Holmes, all right,” concluded Gordon, and there the matter rested for the time being.

At four o’clock in the afternoon the train pulled into the old village of Ticonderoga, which is at the head of Lake George and on the crescent-shaped stream which connects it with Lake Champlain. The boys realized now that it would have been better for them to arrive in the morning, but that would have involved an all-night journey in the train.

There was the inevitable cluster of summer boarders waiting at the station, and the two boys created quite a little ruffle of interest and curiosity as they stepped off the train. They made their way through the group and up to the post-office, where Harry said he wanted to “buzz” the postmaster for any knowledge he might have of the whereabouts of the Oakwood troop. Gordon stood by in fear and trembling lest the official might drop some hint which would simplify their quest and spoil the whole fun of their expedition.

It had gotten around to the postmaster by a somewhat circuitous route that a party of boys and one man had arrived in town the day before and were not known to be staying at any of the houses, so they must have gone somewhere. They couldn’t have stayed in town very long. “If they had, we’d a knowed it,” said the postmaster.

They inquired in the telegraph station as to whether a party of boys had sent a message to Oakwood, N. J., the day before. None had. But the telegraph operator’s sister had called in the doctor that morning, who had told her that the livery stable man had gone into the hardware store to buy a bit and had heard the hardware man say two “rigged-up fellers” had bought a steel trap the night before. So, despite Gordon’s protest, Harry interviewed the hardware man. The incident of the trap was true, but that was all they could learn, and they sought no further information.

It lacked still an hour or two of sunset when they left the village and found themselves on the open road which stretched northward. It traversed a tract of fairly level country about two miles to the west of the lake, and about the same distance to the west of the road rose the mountains. Now and then they could catch a glimpse of the water whose winding course they were following, and always to their left were the hills, rolling one over another far to the westward and fading in color as they receded, till they merged into the horizon. Here and there, amid that multitudinous confusion, there arose some lofty peak touched with the first crimson rays of sunset. Doubtless, there were pleasant villages nestling here and there, and cheerful homes, but these the boys could not see—only the innumerable hills, silent, wild, lonesome. It seemed that they might reach to the farthest ends of the earth. To Gordon the country did not look at all like the map, and it was hard to believe that the print and paper really represented anything or could be used to any purpose.

“Well, here we are in the haystack,” said Harry, cheerily. “Now for the needle—I don’t see it anywhere, do you?”

“Harry,” Gordon answered, “I think we’ve got a job on our hands. Look at those hills. They don’t look much as they do on the map—all crisscrossed up with roads and villages and things.”

“Especially, things,” said Harry. “You see, Kid, we’re between the foothills and the lake. That ridge bends toward the lake and touches the shore about five miles ahead—savvy? We’re cutting right up through the middle of a great big wedge, as you might say, and Dibble Mountain is the point. We’re headed right for it.”

“The point isn’t sharp enough to cut you,” commented Gordon.

“And when we get to Dibble Mountain, we’ll run upstairs and see what we can see.”

The sun was rapidly sinking, and as they followed the unfrequented road, the gathering shadows, the increasing chilliness of the air, the absence of any of the cheerful and familiar signs of human life, were not without their quieting effect on Gordon’s buoyant spirit. He had heard Dr. Brent say that this country was not the Adirondacks proper, that it was not, in fact, a very wild country. But now, as he looked about him at the far-reaching hills with their dense patches of woods, growing somber and more forbidding in the twilight, it seemed to him that no country could possibly be wilder and more impenetrable. Hills, hills, nothing but hills; some rearing their rugged summits high above the rest as if they cherished a kind of lofty scorn at being put on a map and traced with a lead pencil. For the moment, his faith in human resource and the facilities and possibilities of woods-wisdom was shaken in the face of this great, enveloping, silent adversary. He even doubted whether Black Wolf[^[1]] himself (let alone Red Deer) could put up much of a fight against such odds.

Presently the road entered a patch of woodland where frogs croaked despondently in a little marshy pond and crickets kept up their incessant night songs. Then their way brought them into open country again. Silently they tramped on. On their right the road skirted a ravine which descended abruptly and whose bottom was lost in a black, tangled thicket. And beyond, in the direction of the great lake, extended woods till the twilight and the distance merged the tree-tops into one vast dark coverlet. They paused a moment, peering over the broken log fence into the depths. Somewhere in the stillness was the sound of falling water. High above them in the dusk sped a great bird, hastening toward the mountains.

“It’s a pretty big haystack, hey, Kid?” said Harry, cheerily.

“It certainly is,” answered Gordon.

[1] Ernest Thompson Seton.

CHAPTER IV
THE HAYSTACK VS. GORDON LORD

A little farther on they came to a road branching off from the one they were traveling, and Harry found on examining his map that it made a loop of a couple of miles and reëntered the straighter road.

“There must be houses along that road,” said Gordon.

“Why?”

“Else what would be the good of the road at all?”

“Well, then,” said Harry, “what’s the use of this one, if you come to that? There are no houses on it so far.”

“Well, if they both lead to the same place, if the other one just forms a loop, it must be to take in some houses, don’t you see?”

“Maybe,” answered Harry.

“And I believe it would be a good thing for me to go along there and see what I can learn. We’ll meet at the other junction. The troop must have gone along one or the other of these roads, unless they went in another direction altogether. And if there are any houses along there, as there must be, why, somebody must have seen them pass.”

“You seem to be more anxious for tips than you were,” said Harry.

“No, only I think they may have started down that road and cut up into the hills before it joins this one again. What’s the use in just marching right past them?”

The idea struck Harry as a good one; so it was agreed that he should keep to the straight road while Gordon covered the loop. They had not traveled to this point, where they were now to part for an hour or so, without keeping a keen watch for any signs of the troop which the roadside might reveal. But an afternoon shower had obliterated any tracks, if such there were, and the road had yielded no hint of those who had gone before. But Harry, still hopeful despite the gathering dusk, now took his way alone, making careful scrutiny of the right-hand border of the road for any intentional signs that might have been left, although he had no reason to anticipate finding any.

The two boys were to meet where the roads again came together, which was at the foot of Dibble Mountain about two miles ahead, their plan being to camp somewhere under the shadow of the mountain and to climb to the summit in the morning for a bird’s-eye view of the surrounding country.

The light was fast fading as Gordon left his companion and started along the loop road. It was instinctive with him to keep his eyes wide open, and his training as a scout, under Harry’s special tutelage, had developed this trait until it was said of him by his friends, and especially by Red Deer, that his habit of finding things, of picking up pennies, collar buttons, and so forth, was little less than uncanny. His pockets were a veritable junk shop of miscellaneous trifles, the trophies and mementos of his pedestrian tours.

Now, he had not gone a hundred yards along this road when something caught his attention and he paused to examine it closely. It was nothing more than an arrow, possibly three inches long, chalked upon a rock at the roadside. As nearly as he could judge in the dusk, the color of the chalk was pink, but the arrow pointed neither up nor down the road, but across it toward the west. So he crossed the road, examining the bordering trees and land, but could find nothing. He sat down on a rock and thought. To the average boy a mark of this kind would have meant nothing. To a scout it might mean many things. But, unlike most of the scout signs, its meaning was not manifest. It was not the good road sign nor the bad road sign, nor was it the sign that a message was secreted near. Yet it pointed a direction; but the direction showed no path nor trail and was fast wrapping itself in darkness.

He rubbed his fingers over the arrow, making a powdery blur upon the rock and causing his fingers to feel smooth and powdery as he rubbed them together.

“This hasn’t been here long,” said he. Then he pondered, for he knew the rule that Dr. Brent was so fond of repeating. Use your brains first, then your hands and feet.

Gordon knew all the signs, Indian and otherwise, that scouts might employ, but he had never seen a scout mark made with chalk before, and it jarred upon his romantic sense to see this schoolroom material used for purposes of woodcraft. Yet there was the arrow, pointing directly across the road, apparently at nothing. He did not know what to make of it. Perhaps it was only a tramp’s mark. Perhaps—perhaps—then, suddenly, a thought came jumping into his head which gave him a thrill of joy. Three nights ago, in the club room, Dr. Brent had sketched Lake Champlain on the blackboard in pink chalk. That settled it. “I’ve found them,” he shouted, which was very much like him, for he was apt in his enthusiasms to anticipate his triumphs.

Leaping across the road, he got down on his hands and knees, lighting match after match, and searched the ground. Presently he noticed a log spanning the little marshy gully at the side of the road. This he had not seen before, for it was well hidden amid the weedy roadside growths. Now he saw that several reeds which had inclined across the path of this rough bridge had been broken, and hung limply over to one side. The log ran into a floor of pine needles, where no sign of footprint showed. But there were the arrow and the ford and the broken reeds, and these meant that somebody had crossed—crossed and flown up in the air, for all that he could discover. Nervous with expectation, he hurried about the grove, felt of the trees, knelt and examined rocks, and avoided kicking the smallest stone until he had observed its position in regard to other stones. Stealthily, silently, alertly, he moved about. His scout instinct was aroused. But he found nothing, and the long summer twilight was now almost at an end. Peeling some bark from a tree and pulling off a quantity of the sticky resiny substance from others, he hastily kindled a small fire. In a few moments this blazed up, showing him an illuminated area with a ground as smooth as a ballroom. There was not a sign of track or trail. He paused a moment, thinking. Then he pulled up his stocking, which was an indication that he meant business—a sort of challenge.

Thus, with all his spirit of adventure and scouting instinct, he stood, baffled but thoughtful, in the vast, strange country, with his eyes fixed on his little fire. For a moment he forgot Harry, forgot everything but the pink arrow, the log ford, and the broken reeds, and stood there, his brown eyes fixed on the dancing flame, his staff stuck in the ground beside him and his duffel bag thrown over it. Presently, he went back to the log, knelt down, and examined the end of it which rested on the bed of pine needles. On the near side of the log was a very slight oval depression in the ground in which the pine needles were rotted, and where a little red lizard lay contentedly in the dampness. On the side of the log nearest this depression several slugs crawled distractedly about. Gordon reached his arm across the log and rolled it back into the depression where it belonged. Then he sat down upon it and thought.

“Some one must have lost his balance in the middle of the log,” said he, aloud, “and in falling pushed it out of place.” And that could not have been long ago, for the slugs were still moving confusedly here and there and had not yet found the under side of the log. Gordon examined the muddy incline which led from the gully up into the grove. The dank, reedy foliage did not seem to have been disturbed, but in the brighter glow of his growing fire he presently noticed a well-defined, muddy imprint upon a flat rock. If he had discovered a diamond he could not have been more elated.

Now he thought to himself that the person who had met with this trifling accident was either not a scout at all or a scout in a great hurry. For such a thing as a scout calmly falling off a log was preposterous, and Gordon would not entertain the thought except on the theory of great haste. But how had both patrols, sixteen boys, gotten through this grove leaving never a sign? For the pink chalk identified the travelers as the Oakwood troop.

He gathered up a few pieces of bark and some leaves, and putting out his fire made his way hastily up through the grove. Presently he stood at its edge and looked across a spacious stretch of meadow land, beyond which were the grim, dark hills. He kindled another fire on a huge, convex piece of bark and, kneeling, crept along the edge of the grove, endeavoring to discover where the trail came out. But he could find no sign. It was now time to pull up his stocking again and take a long “think,” as he called it.

The result of his “think” was that he walked out into the field about one hundred and fifty feet, placed his little portable fire on the ground and enlarged it with a fresh supply of fuel from the grove. He watched it till its volume satisfied him, then returning to the edge of the grove he “shinnied” up a tree, but was careful not to embarrass his vision by looking directly at the fire. He looked about halfway between it and the grove and there, thrown into bold relief by the neighboring fire and his own high position, there ran a little straight trail across the meadow which died away short of the further side. He slid down from the tree, planted his staff in the ground near his fire, and shook a few burning twigs a yard or two from it. Then he carried his fire as best he could, for its bark tray was now ignited, still farther across the field, as far as the point where he thought the trail had become invisible to him from the tree. Returning to the edge of the grove, he climbed up the tree again. Sure enough, there was the trail visible farther on in the glow of the second fire, and entering the thick woods beyond the meadow. It was barely discernible at that point, yet Gordon, from his high position and by concentrating his gaze, could determine the faint, shadowy line, flickering between visibility and invisibility, as it wound into the silent forest. When he took his eyes from it for a moment, he lost it, and picked it out again with difficulty.

The idea of following it was out of the question; so, looking steadily, he picked out a certain tree near which the trail entered, studying as best he could its height, size, and conformation. Climbing down from the tree and keeping this beacon constantly in view, he ran across the field, stamped out the few remaining embers of his first fire, took his staff, and made a bee-line for his beacon. When he reached it he could not, for the life of him, discover the faintest indication of the trail across the field, but there, opening before him, was a well-defined, beaten path up through the forest. He saw it in the glow from his second fire, a few yards back, which was now dying fast. Leaning against the big tree which had guided him across the meadow, he looked back over the trailless space which he had forced to give up its secret. He looked at the tall, black trees of the grove beyond, whose smooth floor of pine needles had tried to baffle and confound him. Then he threw his duffel bag over his shoulder, and feeling his way cautiously with his staff, started up into the thick forest.

CHAPTER V
THE FOREST HITS BACK

His whole thought now was to reach the camp and surprise the two patrols and Red Deer. Feeling his way cautiously on and upward, for it was a wooded hillside he was traversing, he managed to pick his way along the winding forest path. Now he stumbled over naked roots, now some overhanging or projecting bough impeded his progress. It was useless to look for signs in such darkness; it was with difficulty that he kept to the wild, thickly grown trail. Sometimes he paused, undecided as to its direction, but always went on again, reassured by some trifling clue. Now and then, a clear, unobstructed opening of a few yards convinced him that he was in the path. At other times his only resource was to feel about with hands and feet, determining as best he might the path of least resistance and pressing through its tangled brush to find always an opening farther on. It was difficult work. No one who had gone before, no roadside code, could help him here.

Once or twice he thought of going back and resuming his quest with Harry in the morning, but he had gone so far that it seemed his easiest course, however difficult and involved, to press forward. Moreover, he was fast falling into the odd conceit of viewing the surrounding country, which he had nonchalantly called a haystack, in the light of a great adversary which had thrown down a challenge to him, and he must perforce take up the challenge, else be a coward and a “quitter.” So far he had held his own, and what a glory it would be to march into camp having vanquished these silent, baffling hosts of wood and hill and darkness. “Hello, Charlie,” he would say to the Beavers’ corporal, “hurry up there and get me a bite to eat, will you?” His whole ambition was now to walk carelessly into their midst and squat down by the camp-fire with some cordial, offhand remark.

From this train of thought, he was presently aroused by a sudden vigorous strategic move on the part of his imagined foe. His staff, which he had been bringing to the ground before him like a walking-stick with each step, suddenly sank, touching nothing. He had the presence of mind to drop it and throw both arms quickly behind him, which inclined his body slightly backward and enabled him to retreat a step or two.

Shaking from head to foot, he fumbled in the little flap pocket in his hat crown and lit a match. It flared a second, then went out. But in the sudden glare he saw that he was standing on the brink of a yawning chasm. Still trembling from his narrow escape, he struck another light and saw that one of his footprints was within eighteen inches of the precipice and that the other had actually rested on the very edge, displacing some of the earth, which had crumbled and fallen in. Gordon had had his first lesson in the tactics which the wilderness can use.

He lay flat with his head over the edge and looked down. Nothing but darkness. So again he must use his faithful ally, the fire. Kindling a fire was his great stunt. He would gather up a few dry, brittle twigs or cones, scrape out a little punk, arrange them daintily, make a dome over them with his hands, and presently show you a very ambitious little blaze, as a magician will take a mysterious rabbit from a hat. “Do the fire trick, Kid,” the boys of the troop would say to him. So now he foraged about, accumulated the necessary materials, and presently had a very respectable flame. But the glare about seemed only to make the depths of the precipice darker. It had shown him, however, that the soil displaced by his perilous step was not the only soil that had been disturbed. Scarce two feet farther along the edge of the bank quite a sizable piece of earth had caved in. But he could see nothing below. He cut a straight stick about the size of an ordinary cane. This he whittled with his jack-knife, cutting in from the end of the stick to a depth of about eight inches, until the curly shavings formed a sort of brush. Between these wooden bristles he wedged as much tree gum as he could find on the adjacent trees, and lighting his torch, went cautiously along the edge of the bank.

This soon began to slope gradually until at a distance of about fifty feet he was able to let himself down into the bed of the chasm. It was filled with rocks and fallen trees and dank undergrowth, and yielded the unwholesome odor of rotting wood.

Gordon picked his way through the gully, holding his flaring torch here and there until he was nearly under the spot where he had all but fallen. Here were three logs, two of them lying flat upon the swampy ground, the other leaning against the side of the precipice. He walked along one of these to avoid the wet as much as possible and suddenly came upon a hat, of the same general pattern as his own, lying in the mud. He was just about to pick it up when he saw a few feet farther on a ghastly object. A boy, his face smeared with blood and his leg in a very unnatural position, lay stark before him.

The sight, as it showed in the glare of Gordon’s torch, quite unnerved him, and he stood for a moment on the other log staring at the figure lying prone and motionless in the mud. He could not bring himself to go nearer. Presently, more to relieve his own nervous tension than for any other purpose, he called. But the figure neither stirred nor answered. There was something about its position that frightened Gordon, and he could not bring himself to go close enough to look at the boy’s eyes. Then suddenly the words of General Sir Baden-Powell, which he had read, came jumping into his head,—plain words, plainly stated, and for that reason stamped in the boy’s memory:

A scout is sometimes timid about handling an insensible man or a dead body, or of seeing blood. Well, he will never be much use till he gets over such nonsense. The poor insensible fellow can’t hurt him.

At this recollection the young scout conquered his hesitation, stamped over through the mud to where the boy lay, and did the sensible thing, as a scout should. He circled his hand lightly about the poor, limp wrist and pressed slightly with his two middle fingers. As usual, with a novice, he had the wrong spot, so he moved his fingers ever so little and, sure enough, after a moment’s concentration, he became aware of the little, steady throbbing which told him that at least the boy was alive.

He thrust his now waning torch into the mud and thought. He knew that if either of the boy’s limbs were broken he should not be moved unless absolutely necessary and then only with such handling as he was not in a position to give. He knew that if anything were the matter with the boy’s spine, any save the most careful and skillful moving might prove instantly fatal. But he also knew that no injured person should be left lying there in the mud.

Undoubtedly, the responsibility which had suddenly been thrust upon him, the need of careful judgment, were out of proportion to Gordon’s experience and years, and being of a light-headed, sanguine, and buoyant temperament, the “First Aid” training and ambulance badge had not been especially a part of his ambition. His scoutish triumphs, until now, had all been more or less amusing and humorous, but here was a grave duty resting on his young shoulders. And he met it, as a scout usually does, willingly.

First he crowded all the odds and ends of wood and rock that he could find under the edge of the precipice, where the ground was higher and drier. Then, tugging with all his might and main, he managed to get the three logs over to this pile and rested their ends against it, so that they lay parallel with each other at a slight incline. Then he pressed down into the ground four sticks, one at the head and one at the foot of each outer log, thus effectually preventing their spreading. The lower end, or foot, of this inclined rack rested in the mud just above the prostrate boy’s head. Across this lower end and under the logs, he laid a stout stick whose ends rested just beside the stakes he had driven in the ground. Now he hurried along the gully and up the bank to the spot where he had left his bag. This he took and also such green boughs as he could procure hastily in the dark, and collected some more gum. When he returned it was necessary for him to re-whittle his torch and re-fill it with this substance.

Arranging the boughs upon the rack and making as smooth a bed as he could in his great hurry, he spread his blanket over all. Then he kindled a fire up under the precipice where the ground was dry. All of his fuel had to be brought from above, and he carted down several loads in his bag, having emptied it of its contents. After he had succeeded, by much skillful persuasion, in inducing the little blaze to brace up and try to amount to something in the world, he drove two sticks into the ground, one on either side of the fire, and from one to the other of these he strung a piece of snare wire. On the other side of the gully, water was trickling down a rock, but how to entice it into his pail was a question. He noticed on the ground, near the unconscious boy, a little pamphlet. Without any very clear idea of its possible utility he picked it up. On the cover were printed the words:

THE BOY SCOUTS’ SCHEME

What It Is What It Is Not

He knew the pamphlet well. Tearing the cover page off, he took his pail and going over to the miniature waterfall he held the page, slanting ways, tight against the rock with the other edge leading into his pail. In a few moments the pail was half filled with fairly clean water. This he hung from the snare wire above the flame.

By the exercise of all his strength and with the greatest care, he succeeded in pulling the prostrate form up the inclined rack, cutting and pulling off the boy’s outer clothing as fast as it reached the foot of the rack so that the blanket might be kept dry. It was a delicate and difficult task, but he did it. When the limp, unconscious figure was on the rack, Gordon lifted one side of the foot by means of the cross bar underneath, laying the edge of this cross bar on a rock which he had placed for the purpose. He did the same with the other side. Thus he had succeeded in placing his charge on a couch well above the mud, dry and comparatively comfortable. He took off his own khaki coat and laid it over the boy. When his water had heated, he washed the boy’s face carefully with his handkerchief.

As the mud and blood disappeared, a white face with closed eyes was revealed. Gordon started, then stared intently. It was the very boy who had passed through the aisle in the railroad train and given Harry Arnold the full salute. There was an ugly wound on one side of his forehead. This, however, had ceased to bleed, and Gordon bathed it carefully and bandaged it with his handkerchief.

Here his resource failed him. He knew of nothing more that he could do for the poor fellow’s comfort. It was quite too dark for smoke signals, and the woods were too dense for an effectual message by fire. It occurred to him to open the little scout bulletin, thinking that possibly something might be written in it, some name, or troop or patrol name, which might suggest some course better than merely waiting. He held it close to the fire and ran it over. It was Bulletin No. 5, containing among other things the required tests for tenderfoot, first-class, and second-class scouts. These were listed numerically, and as Gordon was very familiar with all of them they did not interest him particularly. Having done all the second-class tests, he did not even glance at these, but he did bestow a fond and covetous eye upon the first-class list. The first test, beginning, “Swim fifty yards,” was checked off. The second, requiring the sum of fifty cents in the savings bank, was also checked.

“He’s to the good on the financial side,” commented Gordon. The third requirement (the signal test) was also checked. Not so the fourth.

“4. Go on foot or row a boat alone to a point seven miles away and return, or if conveyed by any vehicle or animal, go to a distance of fifteen miles and back; and write a short report on it. It is preferable that he should take two days over it.”

“Go on foot, alone, to a point seven miles away and return,” said Gordon, thoughtfully. “Ticonderoga must be about five miles from here. But the fellow came up on the train. If he’s trying to make his test—. Well, anyway, if he came from the village and was headed for a point seven miles from the village, his camp must be only a mile or two farther on.”

Inspired by the thought, he added more fuel to his fire and printed across the back of the pamphlet, with a charred stick, the words, Gone for help.

He stuck the pamphlet on a twig and placed it so that the boy, if he opened his eyes, must see it in the light of the fire. Then, hurrying along the gully, carrying nothing but his staff, he sought for a place low enough or sloping enough for him to mount the farther side of the hollow. Finally, clambering up through tangled brush, he reached the brow and went cautiously along the edge to a point almost above where his fire still burned and where the prostrate figure lay, stark and white and motionless. He lighted a match to make sure that the path recommenced here, and in its short glare he noticed something which made him start.

It was a new, clearly defined footprint, pointing in the same direction that he himself was about to take.

CHAPTER VI
THE SIGN OF THE TURTLE

Gordon now found the path easier to follow, partly because it was better defined and less obstructed by brush, and partly because the moon was coming to his assistance. Its light flickered through the tree tops some way before him over the summit of a hill which lay directly in his path. Presently, the woods were all aglow with its checkered brightness.

Keeping his eye ever to the right of the path for possible signs or directions, he hurried on, running when the way permitted, through a marshy hollow, and was just about to begin the climb of the hill before him when his observant eye became riveted on a certain flat stone with an oval wet spot in the center. If he had not been a scout he would not have noticed this at all, and even the average scout would probably have mistaken it for a footprint. But to Gordon, even in his haste, the little wet trail which led from the oval spot to the edge of the stone told another story. He knew a turtle had been basking here within a very short time and had gone away. Why? Gordon asked himself as he hurried on. For he knew from his trusty old friend, “Doc. Wood,” as he called the famous writer of natural history, that when a turtle seeks a high and dry position in the evening he does not contemplate moving out at short notice. So Gordon put the footprint and the fact of the turtle’s sudden departure together and became very curious. If some one had preceded him along this path, why were there not more footprints? And why had the some one deliberately left the injured boy to his fate? Then suddenly another thought came to him which made him shudder, but he had no time to think, and hurried on.

The woods became more sparse now, and presently a road crossed the boy’s path. Beyond it the hill continued to rise gently, with only a few scattered trees here and there. The moon was now well clear of the summit, and smiling down encouragingly upon the sturdy, indomitable little fellow as he paused, gave his stocking a vigorous hitch, and started to run up to the summit. If a view from that favorable position revealed nothing, then he would have to consider whether it would be wiser to attempt to pick up the trail down the opposite slope and thus find the proper entrance into the woods beyond, or give up and go back to the stricken boy. For he knew he must not let his quest for succor run too far, and that a scout must always think and use his judgment.

Excitedly, nervously, he mounted the bare summit of the hill, finding never a footprint to encourage him, nor a familiar scout sign. For a second he stood there, seeming very small in that limitless expanse, gazing about in the moonlight. He looked down the hill, concentrated his gaze, and tried to pick out some sign of trail. But the hubbly, coarse-grown hillside kept its secret, if it had any, and Gordon knelt down in quest of some hint, some clue, near at hand. He rose, bewildered, uncertain, almost discouraged. His uniform was covered with burrs and torn by the brambly thickets he had crawled through.

But the first round of his encounter with this rugged enemy was over, as he was presently to know. And Master Gordon Lord, scout of the second class, Beaver Patrol, 1st Oakwood Troop, was the victor. For out of the woods which began under the further slope of the hill and extended far into the distance, there rose about a quarter of a mile away, little, fitful, fast-dissolving gusts of smoke.

A few moments later he stood at the foot of the hill looking anxiously through the thick forest where only flickering glints of the moonlight penetrated. But no moonlight was needed now, for he could distinguish several squares of white, half hidden among the trees, and rendered visible by the cheerful blaze of a camp-fire.

“I’m certainly a dandy!” said Gordon, with unconcealed pride, as he started through the woods, running with all his might and main.

No one heard the remark unless it was the man in the moon, who looked down with a broad smile on his face and seemed to wink his eye as if to say, “You certainly are, my boy.”

CHAPTER VII
WHEN SCOUT MEETS SCOUT

The camp consisted of three wall tents, a small tent of modified tepee fashion, and a lean-to used for cooking, outside of which was erected a huge, rough dining board. The whole appearance of the place was very homelike. Woods trophies and articles of woodcraft handiwork hung about from the low-spreading branches, and it was evident that the campers had been there for some time.

Before each of the wall tents was planted a patrol flag, and gathered about the cheerful fire was as merry a company as Gordon had ever seen. A genial-looking man of perhaps thirty-five years was sitting amongst a score or so of boys, who in negligée scout attire squatted and lolled about him, as if intent upon what he was saying.

All this Gordon saw from a distance. But before he had approached within fifty yards of the camp, and before he could possibly have been seen and scarcely heard, a tall boy rose suddenly, looked intently in his direction, and called:

“Who’s there?”

“Gee, he’s a peach, all right!” breathed Gordon, never answering, but rushing pell-mell into their midst. Every boy rose, surveying him wonderingly. The man remained seated. Gordon paid not the slightest heed to the gaping throng, but made a bee-line for the man and, standing panting and disheveled before him, made him the full salute. Then, breathlessly, he gasped out his errand. Instantly all was activity.

“Call in Billy,” said the man, quietly, as he took a railroad lantern from a tent pole. “You, my boy,” he went on to Gordon, “will stay here. Who are you, anyway?”

“Kid—I mean, Gordon Lord, sir; 1st Oakwood New Jersey, Troop. My patrol leader and I came up to see if we could find camp—our own camp, I mean. They’re somewhere up this way. I—”

“Well, you can tell me the rest when we get back,” said the man, cheerfully. “Where’s Billy, anyway? Give him another call, George.”

A succession of shrill whistles was repeated, and presently a boy wearing spectacles came dashing into camp.

“Get your kit, Billy, and come along,” said the man. “Walter’s gone down that chasm in the farther woods—head cut and leg in a bad way. Here, Wentworth, you and Norton get the stretcher and come along—you’d better come too, Charlie.”

“Sure you can find the place?” asked Gordon, a little doubtful.

“Oh, yes,” answered the man. “We put up the logs. Is Cattell there? Here, Cattell, you rake up some grub for this boy. Go over there, my boy, and let the Ravens take care of you.”

The Ravens knew how to do more than croak, as Gordon presently found, for they sat him at the rustic table and gave him such a helping of hunters’ stew as would have sufficed for the entire patrol. He entered upon the ambitious task of eating it with the same nonchalant determination that had led him into the woods, without the slightest idea of the magnitude of the task before him, but with cheerful confidence in his ability to see it through somehow.

While he ate, the boys gathered about him, plying him with questions, and soon had the full story of his trip and the circumstances of his finding the injured boy. He learned that they were a troop of Albany scouts, three full patrols, that the man was Mr. Wade, their scoutmaster, and that Billy, or “Four Eyes,” or “Doc,” as he was indifferently called, was their “First Aid” boy, who had attained to a superlative proficiency in that art. He learned also that Walter, the injured boy, was, as he had surmised, trying to complete his fourth test for first-class scout, on his way back from a visit to the city.

“They have pink chalk in Albany,” said Gordon, “haven’t they?”

“Sure they have,” answered several boys.

“We have that in Oakwood, too,” Gordon commented.

Presently, a tall, serious-looking boy vaulted up on the table and began to question Gordon while he ate.

“You say you saw a footprint just as you left the chasm on this side?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see any more of them?”

“No, it was too dark in the woods. In a few minutes when the moon came out and the woods thinned out the other side of the hill I saw a wet spot on a stone.”

“Footprint?”

“No—place where a turtle had been.”

“Well, what of that?”

“Turtle went away.”

“What of it?”

“Somebody must have passed.”

“Bully for you!” chimed in several voices.

“That’s nothing,” said Gordon, encouraged. “Do you know how—”

“Just a minute,” interrupted the serious-looking boy. “After you saw the turtle mark, didn’t you see any other sign?”

“No,” answered Gordon. “I was so crazy to get here that I didn’t look.”

“Yes, of course,” agreed the boy. “You say you saw the wet spot near the swamp, then you started up the hill crossing the road?”

“Yes.”

“Have some more stew?”

“Y-es.”

“Here, Cattell, fill her up again! He’s game.” Then to Gordon, “Did you find any trail up the hill?”

“No—didn’t look. If I hadn’t spotted you fellows from the top of the hill, I’d have gone back down again, most likely, and tried to pick her up, bird’s-eye.”

“You mean with the fire, the way you did before?”

“Yes.”

A murmur of admiring comment passed through the group, and one or two enthusiastic boys pounded Gordon on the shoulder. But the serious-looking boy was absorbed in thought.

“Whoever it was,” he finally said, “must have turned down the road—or up.”

“Sure,” said Gordon.

It was characteristic of him that the suspicion of foul play had sat but lightly in his thoughts up to this moment. The footprint near the chasm had puzzled him and he had attached a significance to the wet spot on the rock—perhaps a greater significance than it deserved. He had also wondered how the three slender logs, out of which he had fashioned the rough couch, came to be at the bottom of the chasm. But he was altogether too lighthearted to connect any or all of these circumstances with the idea of a crime. With him, tracking and such arts were a delightful species of amusement, and the idea of using these things as a means to a serious end had never entered his head.

But now he realized that this serious, precise, calculating boy who sat at his elbow was endeavoring to squeeze information out of these trivial signs and make them point to the solution of a secret, the very existence of which Gordon had hardly suspected. He perceived, somewhat to his annoyance, that he had only noticed those things which appealed to his romantic love of woodcraft, and that certain other things which Harry Arnold might have seen had entirely escaped him.

“You say the pamphlet was lying in the mud?”

“Yes—it—it never occurred to me how it got there.”

“Of course not—you were in a great hurry. Don’t think I’m criticising you. You’ve got the silver cross coming to you for what you did.”

“Honest—do you think so?”

“It would be a queer committee that would refuse it.”

“Cracky!” said Gordon.

“Have another dish of stew?”

“N-no.”

“Now listen. There were no tracks, prints, signs of any kind in the chasm?”

“No, the mud was so thick it would close right up. Besides—”

“Yes, I understand; you were busy and excited, and you did fine. But I’ll tell you something that you didn’t know. That boy had forty dollars with him to buy a canoe. At least, I suppose he had it. He intended to get it while he was at home.”

“You think somebody robbed him?” said Gordon.

“I think it’s likely. There were two young men here, strangers, just dropped in on us a few days ago. Walter and the rest of us talked pretty freely about his trip to Albany.”

“Yes, and he said he was going to get the money,” chimed in another boy.

“He expected to come back last night, too,” said another.

“Who were the strangers?” Gordon ventured.

“No idea,” answered one of the boys, “except that they said they were hunting. They were country fellows,” he added quickly.

Most of the boys, including Gordon, had now repaired to the camp-fire, which was blazing cheerfully. There was a slight constraint among them, caused by their suspense and uncertainty as to the news Mr. Wade would bring them; and Gordon, despite his native buoyancy, felt the influence of this atmosphere.

Presently, the tall, serious boy (the others called him Al), who had been pacing back and forth like an animal in its cage, suddenly paused and spoke to Gordon. The question that he asked, however, was destined to lead him on to very dangerous ground, as he soon found.

“Where did you say your friend is now?”

“He kept to the straight road north from Ticonderoga,” Gordon answered. “He was to wait for me where the road I took joined his again—right under Dibble Mountain.”

“Now this road you crossed coming up the hill yonder—do you know where that goes? Well, if you had taken it and turned to your right, you would have made a long, sweeping curve and brought up under Dibble Mountain on the same road where your friend is waiting, about a quarter of a mile above him.”

“Then that’ll be the best way for me to get to him,” commented Gordon. “I must start along as soon as your scoutmaster gets back. He’ll be wondering what’s become of me.”

“How long do you suppose he’s been waiting?”

“Close on to an hour, I guess, but he knew I was going to stop to make inquiries.”

“Then you think he’s still there?”

“Guess so.”

“Don’t think he’ll get rattled because you haven’t shown up?”

“He never gets rattled,” said Gordon, contemptuously.

The boys smiled.

“He understands the Morse code—probably?”

To this question Gordon disdained to reply except in a very general way. “He understands everything,” said he.

“Bully for him!” called several of the boys.

“He’s the real thing, all right,” commented another.

Gordon was conscious of the suggestion of “jollying” in these remarks, and his answer was not altogether tactful; but he had been touched in a sensitive spot, for he could tolerate no question as to Harry’s all-round proficiency.

“He can do anything he tries,” he said vehemently. “He’s been down Long Island Sound in a canoe; he lived in a lumber camp—he was lost in the Canadian woods once—he knows all about South Africa—he swam three hundred miles, I mean yards—and shot the rapids—and—and—he can make a rice pudding!” That was the best he could do for Harry on the impulse of the moment, and he paused to take breath.

“Did he use his rifle when he shot the rapids?” asked one boy, quietly.

“He’s been on a log jam, too,” shouted Gordon.

“That anything like currant jam?” inquired another.

“He can lick any scout in—”

“Let up,” said Al, still pacing the ground thoughtfully, and the whole thing went up in a general laugh. It was Gordon’s fate always to be jollied, which meant (if he had only known it) that everybody, especially older boys, liked him. And on the present occasion it was done largely to relieve the suspense of waiting.

Suddenly, however, Al paused and addressed the group: “Scouts, I suspect Walter has been robbed—by whom I don’t know. I shouldn’t like to say that I suspect any one in particular, but it looks funny. If the things our friend here noticed mean anything, they mean that whoever tampered with the bridge and then went through Walter’s pockets after he fell, came in this direction till he reached the road on the other side of the hill. If there had been any trail over the hill, I think our young friend here would have found it. Now, if somebody turned into the road and went north, he’s making a long circuit to Dibble Mountain. There’s no crossroad, and he’ll come out on the road where this fellow’s friend—”

“He’s patrol leader of the Beavers,” said Gordon.

“Yes,—where the Beavers’ patrol leader is supposed to be waiting.”

“Well?” said several voices.

“Well, you see that hill? I propose to send a Morse message to that fellow from the top of the hill. I think if he’s still where we think he is, he could see it; even if he was farther along the road, he could see it. There’s just about one chance in fifty that the scheme will pan out right. But I propose right now to flash a Morse message northeast from the hill. The top of the hill is bare. If this Oakwood scout is anywhere along that farther road, he ought to see it. Whether we can make our meaning clear is another question. If he sees it and understands it—well, here, wait a minute.” He entered a tent and presently came out with a paper on which he had written something. This he read aloud.

“Camp here. Take first road north. Notice strangers. Scout robbed. Am safe. Lord.”

“How does that strike you?” said he, as a dozen boys crowded eagerly about him.

Gordon was all excitement. He had used the Morse code as a plaything many a time, but now it was to flash a message through the night, over wood and valley, perhaps to outwit a criminal. It was to sweep aside darkness and distance, and take a short cut to the country under Dibble Mountain. If Harry was still there and saw it and read it, he would go a quarter of a mile or so along the road, to where it met the circling road from the hill, and watch any one who might pass. He thought of the boy at the other end, waiting in the darkness of a strange country. And his heart beat with anxiety lest, for some reason, the plan might not carry. Perhaps he doubted a little the reliability of the Morse code. Never for an instant, at least not yet, did he doubt the efficiency of Harry Arnold.

There was a rustling among the trees, and presently the little group of rescuers appeared bearing the stricken scout on a stretcher.

“Come inside a minute, Al,” said Mr. Wade, in a low, grave voice. “You come in, too, my boy,” he said to Gordon.

There was something in his tone that almost frightened Gordon, and he had difficulty in controlling himself as he followed Al into one of the tents. There was no one there but Mr. Wade, the “First Aid” boy, Al, and Gordon.

“Walter’s been robbed, Al,” said the scoutmaster. “He was thrown down the cliff—the bridge was fixed. He’ll get well. I want Winthrop to go right to Ticonderoga.”

“I’m going to flash a Morse message from the hill, sir,” said Al. “This boy’s patrol leader is over east there somewhere. There’s a possibility that he might get it and watch the road.”

“That’s right,” said Mr. Wade. “Good idea.”

It seemed to Gordon, however, that he did not have much faith in this. Al did not pause to discuss the matter, but left the tent. Presently, he and a dozen other boys started through the woods in the direction of the hill.

Gordon stood, rather uncomfortably, near the entrance to the tent, not knowing what he was supposed to do.

“Did you have something to eat?” Mr. Wade asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, go over there a second, then; don’t stand and talk to him, and I want you to go right out.”

Gordon crossed to the stretcher where the “First Aid” boy was adjusting a bandage on Walter’s forehead. Mr. Wade stood quietly by. The “First Aid” boy leaned over and whispered to the stricken scout, “Here he is.”

Gordon stood looking down into the white face. Presently, he was aware of a movement under the blanket. The “First Aid” boy evidently knew what it meant, for he raised the covering slightly and a white, shaking hand appeared from beneath. The twitching fingers seemed to grope for a moment, then the little finger was bent down and the thumb pressed over it. The hand was raised feebly to the shoulder, resting on the pillow. Then Gordon became conscious of a film over his own eyes and everything seemed to glisten. He pressed his own little finger down with his thumb and raised his three middle fingers level with his shoulder. Then the eyes of the prostrate boy weakly closed. Neither spoke.

CHAPTER VIII
THE MESSAGE OF THE FLAME

Gordon made a bee-line through the woods in the direction of the hill, and presently overtook several of the boys, one of whom carried a lantern. When they reached the brow of the eminence, they found that preparations, under Al’s direction, were rapidly going forward.

A lone sapling stood on the summit, and about ten feet from this they had planted a pole eight or nine feet high, steadying it by lines running diagonally to the ground and attached to pegs. From the top of this pole to a branch equally high on the sapling ran a stout line on which had been placed two metal rings (evidently all that were available), and some of the boys were now busily binding willow withes around the line, so that presently the rope had half a dozen rings of one sort or another encircling it. The moon had gone behind clouds which were fast covering the sky, and the boys worked almost wholly by the light of their lantern. But they worked rapidly, and within a few minutes a large square of tent canvas had been hung from the line, thus forming a curtain which could be shifted back and forth. Its position, facing a little north of east, was determined by the compass, and was, of course, accurate so far as compass points were concerned. But whether Harry Arnold was precisely northeast, or precisely east, and just how far and in just what direction, there was no telling.

Gordon looked down from the hill, over the low-lying woods which stretched eastward, a little north of where he had found his way through. He thought he could discern a shadowy mass which seemed to appear and then dissolve in the distance, and which he took to be Dibble Mountain. And beneath him he saw a faint gray band which he knew to be the road. This, he now knew, inscribed a great curve through the woods and came out about a quarter of a mile above his intended meeting-place with Arnold. He meant, as soon as this signaling was finished, to set forth along the road toward Dibble Mountain.

As he watched the rapid and rather elaborate preparations, he became conscious of a feeling of responsibility and accompanying apprehension that he might be held accountable in some degree if the signal failed to bear results. So troubled was he that he did not at once notice the boy who was kneeling behind the canvas and littering the ground about him with burned matches.

“Will you let me try it?” said Gordon, finally, coming out of his absorption.

“Sure,” answered the boy, rising with alacrity.

Gathering a number of chips which had been scattered by the ax in trimming the pole, Gordon knelt, crunched a piece of paper into a little, loose wad, and quickly, daintily constructed a tiny pyramid around and above it. Over this pyramid he made a larger one, keeping by the necessary fuel for one still larger. The process reminded one of the wooden egg enclosed by a larger one, and that by a still larger one, often seen at Easter time.

Now his small hands formed a partial dome over the outer pyramid; now there came a crackling and a little smoke, now the third pyramid was quickly built over the second, and Gordon watched it intently while a few little snakes of flame squirmed out from their inner cage. He paid no heed to the admiring comments of the boys about him. Like a true artist, his mind was fixed upon his task, not upon his audience. Now his hand groped behind him for some larger twigs. One or two he threw away (the boys did not know why). With those which met his approval still another pyramid was formed to receive the flames which were now escaping freely from the third pyramid. For a moment he studied the little mass intently, holding several sticks in his left hand. The thought came over him that presently his fire would flash the first sign in a message to his friend, somewhere beyond those thick woods, waiting, or perhaps searching, in the darkness. And oh, how he hoped the fire would be seen, but scarcely dared to hope it would be understood.

Presently, satisfied, he rose, and pulling an apple from his pocket refreshed himself with a gigantic bite.

“You’re all right,” said the tall Al, slapping him on the shoulder. Gordon smiled his broadest scout smile, with unconcealed pleasure at the older boy’s praise. He was the smallest boy in the group, and there was something about him which drew the others irresistibly to him.

“You’re a wonder!” shouted one, with genuine enthusiasm.

“That’s nothing,” said Gordon, as he took another huge bite. I do not know where he got the apple.

The fire was now coming on famously. “Pull her over,” called a boy, grabbing the curtain. “Never mind the regular call signal—let’s begin and run her across the flame quick for four or five minutes—that’ll do to attract attention.”

This advice was taken, for all the nice points and rules of the Morse signal code cannot be observed with a bonfire on a hilltop. They pulled the curtain rapidly from side to side, alternately revealing and concealing the blaze, and skillfully relieving each other from time to time, for it required some strength and a good deal of agility.

As Gordon stood watching them, he was roused by a light hand on his shoulder and turned to find Mr. Wade standing by his side.

“You mustn’t expect too much of your friend,” he said in a kind of reassuring tone. “It’s possible he’ll see this, but there’s many a slip, you know, betwixt the cup and the lip. Anyway, it won’t be his fault.”

“He can do ’most anything, sir,” said Gordon, earnestly. “Honest, he can. If he only sees it he’ll—”

“Yes, of course,” said Mr. Wade; “and this is good practice for the boys, anyway.”

“But I’m going to start along toward Dibble Mountain just as soon as they get through this. He must have been waiting a couple of hours already.”

“Better stay with us till morning,” said Mr. Wade; “you’ve done enough for one night.”

Just then Al came up to ask about Walter Lee, the injured boy.

“He’s doing well,” said the scoutmaster. “The wound isn’t deep, and seems to be clean, thanks to our young runner here. It bled a good deal, though, and his ankle is strained. The bridge was tampered with, and he must have gone down as soon as he set foot on it. I was wondering who those fellows were who dropped in on us the other day. Walter’s pockets were empty; he says he had forty dollars. I’ve sent Winthrop and John down to Ti to notify the authorities and get a doctor. I guess they can pick their way there all right; I told them not to try any Gordon Lord short-cuts. Walter’ll be all right. Here, Frank,” he called, “let Al stand near you with the message in code form. Let’s see that. That’s all right. Now, just call the code signs and cross them off as they’re shown—something may come of this yet.”

He started for the camp again, and it seemed to Gordon that he took but secondary interest in the signaling. He did not know whether to be glad or sorry for this skepticism. He felt that if the plan failed to carry, as he feared it would, it would be well to have the head of the camp there to acquit Harry of any blame. Gordon did not give a serious thought to the impression he might have made in this strange camp; but he was very jealous for Harry’s reputation, especially after the puff he had given it, and he wanted more than he could tell to have his friend do the improbable and make good. He had an unselfish and unqualified admiration for Harry, and he was sorely troubled now lest his hero fail in the face of these Albany scouts.

The first letter of the message had been stamped upon the darkness when Gordon came out of his preoccupation, and he watched the rest of the work with keen and nervous interest.

“Haul her over, Bill—now back again—cross off your dot, Al—wait a second now—let her go again—that’s the ticket. Hold on now—three seconds—there you are. Now show her for two even spaces; now wait—three seconds—don’t be in too much of a hurry; he’ll wait if he sees it. Let her go again—quick now—do this one careful. Read her off, Al, wake up—short flash—wait—long flash—wait, wait! Another long flash now—wait—now a short one. There you are, fellows, printed right plank against the side of old Dibble Mountain, C-A-M-P! Hurrah for the Raven signal corps!”

All this involved a good deal of exercise on the part of several boys, but nothing happened as a result. Gordon did not exactly expect anything to happen, but it seemed like a good deal of energy wasted.

On the hilltop all was bustle and excitement, but the dark woods below and beyond, and the open lowland stretching farther still to the shore of the great lake, took not the slightest notice. Gordon looked over Al’s shoulder at the message. They had not done one-tenth of it. He wondered how the flashes would look from a distance and thought how much concentration of mind it would require to make head or tail of it. Though he was a scout of the scouts, he found that he had to strain his faith a little to believe that anything could really come of this. And he was conscious of almost a feeling of regret that he had given quite such a glowing account of Harry.

A fresh relay of boys had started the second word.

“Wake up, Al—spin her off!”

“Four short flashes,” said Al.

“Four it is; here she goes—over and back—over and back—wait!”

“One short,” called Al.

“That’s E—now for the next.”

“Short, long, short,” called Al.

“Pull her over, Ed—now back—now a long one—shut her off! Now a short one. Next letter, Al.”

“Short flash.”

“Correct for Albert. Over and back—seat your partner!”

“Camp here!” shouted a boy, enthusiastically.

Thus the work went cheerfully on. It required precision, exertion. It was close to half an hour when they reached the end.

“How do you spell your name?” said Al; “G-o-r-d-o-n?”

“Put it ‘Kid,’” Gordon answered; “that’s shorter and it’s what he always calls me.”

A sudden inspiration seized Al. “Here,” he said; “come and sign your own name.”

Gordon hesitated, then went forward. The boys, catching the spirit of the thing, fell back, while Al himself took the other end of the curtain. Gordon hauled the canvas over, revealing the flame long enough to indicate the dash. Then came the short flash, then the dash again. He almost heard Harry’s quick, low voice, saying, “Hello, Kid,” as he paused before the middle letter.

“Forward and back,” called a boy.

Gordon’s scout smile broadened into its wonted crescent as his small hands worked the two short flashes.

“Hurrah for the Oakwoods!” several fellows shouted, and Gordon smiled still more broadly, as he always did when encouraged or jollied or praised.

“Dash and two dots,” said Al.

And the name that Harry Arnold always called him had been flashed forth over woods and valley and meadow, toward the now invisible Dibble Mountain and Lake Champlain.

That night the Ravens, of whom Al Wilson was patrol leader, doubled up with the Elephants. The Elephant patrol consisted of smaller boys and was sometimes facetiously called the infant class. The whole six of them were tenderfeet with a vengeance, and Mr. Wade usually slept in their tent. This night, however, he shooed the Ravens into the Elephants’ quarters so that Walter Lee, himself, and the “First Aid” boy might have a tent to themselves. But some of the Ravens roosted out under the trees.

The Elephant patrol was a great institution, and their leader, Frankie Haines, was fully aware of this fact. He attended all the officers’ meetings in the tepee, and on one memorable occasion had sat on a troop committee. The Elephants’ flag was flauntingly displayed outside their stronghold; they took a mighty pride in their name and were very clannish, and hung much together. They were all very punctilious about their uniforms. Indeed, they furnished so much wholesome entertainment to the third patrol that the boys of that division had found it impossible to limit their smiles to the requirements of Section 8, Scout Law, and were known as the Laughing Hyenas.

It was with the Hyenas that Gordon was to spend the rest of the night. It was with difficulty that he had been persuaded to give up his intention of going in search of Harry; but Mr. Wade realized that he stood in need of rest. To save Harry Arnold from anxiety, however, he offered to send two of the camp boys to the meeting place at Dibble Mountain. So Cattell and another boy had started north along the road, it being agreed that if they found no trace of Harry near the junction of the two roads they should return to camp early in the morning.

If the Laughing Hyenas had been cast to sleep with the Elephants, there is no telling what might have happened. But the Elephants and the Ravens got along very well considering, and it was as good as a circus to see the older boys coming in, one by one, and making the full salute to Frankie.

The Elephants had looked upon Gordon as in some measure their especial property, and felt that his glory was their glory, for he was younger than any of the camp boys save themselves, and small for his age. It would have pleased them to extend the hospitality of their tent to the honored guest and strut a little in consequence, but Mr. Wade’s order was not to be questioned.

Gordon lay among the Hyenas, who had given him a rousing welcome to their tent, and listened to their talk about the accident at the chasm and the sending of the Morse message. One by one, voices dropped out of the discussion as their owners fell asleep, until only three talked on in the darkness.

“He’s all right,” said one, “and a mighty clever little fellow. He seems to have an idea that his chum is just as smart as he is himself.”

“He thinks the world of his patrol leader, all right,” said another. “I don’t suppose there’s one chance in a thousand of that fellow’s catching the message.”

“Oh, he might have seen the fire,” put in another, “but whether he could follow it is another question. It was pretty long for a fire message.”

“Yes, and even if he got the sense of it, he’d be a wonder if he did anything.”

“What could he do, anyway?”

“He can make a rice pudding.”

“Sure he can!”

“Well, it was good sport sending the message, anyway, but jiminy, my arm is stiff!”

“Silence there between decks!” called a new voice.

“Ralph, the bos’n, as I live! Thought you were asleep, Ralph.”

“I bet Al Wilson could have caught those flashes and spelled them out, all right.”

“You bet he could.”

Presently the voices ceased altogether, and Gordon lay in his corner near the wall of the tent, thinking over all that had happened since he parted from Harry. He had made a great hit with this Albany troop, greater than he supposed, but his mind was by no means at ease. He thought of his chum waiting or searching for him with no clue to his whereabouts, and of how Harry must spread his balloon silk shelter and lie down alone, perplexed and anxious about himself. And here was he, resting on a springy cot after a goodly supper of hunters’ stew. And he had allowed two strangers to go out in the night to find and make explanations to his friend. Oh, how he hoped that by some fortunate chance Harry had caught the message and actually understood it.

Of course, he had no doubt as to his duty after finding the stricken Walter. But perhaps he ought to have gone first to meet Harry, and then together they could have followed the trail of the pink arrow. He made up his mind that as soon as morning came he would take this road under the hill and go straight to Dibble Mountain, and if Harry were not there he would track him and find him. “I can do it all right,” he assured himself; “that’s nothing.”

During the excitement of the evening, his chief desire had been that Harry should do a mighty feat in the face of all odds, and show these Albany fellows what a winner he really was. But now he found himself growing more and more doubtful of the possibility of this and thinking only of Harry’s anxiety when he did not appear.

Still, he dreaded the morning, when the boys would doubtless speak indulgently of Harry, cheerfully humoring his own hero-worship, and probably feeling in their hearts that his friend’s greatness existed chiefly in his own mind. “If they only knew of the things he has done,” he thought; “if they only knew.”

Then, for the first time, he fell to thinking of the robbery. It was inconceivable to his honest, buoyant soul. Never had he been brought so close to a crime before. Some one who knew that Walter Lee would be coming through the woods with money had tampered with the bridge and lurked about until the boy fell insensible, then robbed him, and left him, perhaps to die. He began to realize the horror of the thing now. He thought of Walter, as he had found him, lying stark and white in the muddy chasm. For all he knew, Harry might now be lying, bleeding and unconscious, in some gully where he had fallen searching for his recreant friend. Sleep was out of the question.

He hastily pulled on his clothing, raised the wall of the tent, and crept softly out, stumbling into the drain ditch. A few yards away a gleam of light shone from a tent upon the Ravens’ patrol flag just outside. Gordon stood at a distance looking in. Walter Lee lay on a cot in the center, and the “First Aid” boy stood near making jerky motions as if hammering tacks. Then he placed something in Walter’s mouth. It seemed to Gordon that Walter was smoking a cigarette—strange doings for a boy scout! Then he saw that the “First Aid” boy had been shaking down the mercury in the clinical thermometer, preparatory to taking his patient’s temperature.

This “First Aid” boy had not mixed with the others, had hardly spoken to any one during the evening. He had shown no interest in the signaling, nor even in the robbery. Apparently he had no intention of sleeping. He wore above the elbow of his right arm one of the grandest badges that a boy scout can seek—the ambulance badge.

“I wish Dr. Brent could see that fellow,” thought Gordon. He was always ready to admire others. In a corner of the tent under a lantern sat Mr. Wade writing. Gordon wondered if he were writing to Walter Lee’s parents. A faint odor of carbolic from the tent mingled with the pure, still air of the night. It was very quiet within. The “First Aid” boy made no sound as he moved about. “I wish I knew that fellow’s name,” said Gordon.

He crept away into the woods and up the hill, where the fire—a long period to the message, as Al called it—was still burning,—a useless beacon, as it seemed. He went down the other side of the hill to the road, took out his jack-knife, opened both blades, and stuck one of them into the earth. Kneeling, he fixed his teeth on the other blade. There was no vibration, no sound which could possibly be construed into a distant footfall. He tried it again, fifty yards or so along the road, with the same result.

Slowly he trudged up the hill again, pulled up his stocking, and stood by the fire. In the woods below he could distinguish the faint gleam of the lantern in the open tent. There was no sound but the low sputtering of the blaze and the distant hoot of an owl. Gordon sat down and clasped his hands around his drawn-up knees.

“These fellows don’t know how hard it is to shoot rapids and ride logs down a river,” he said.

He did not even have an apple to comfort him.

CHAPTER IX
HARRY ARNOLD, SCOUT

Harry Arnold sat on a rock by the roadside, eating raisins out of a small pasteboard box. On the ground lay his canvas pack, and against it leaned his rifle. The air was brisk, for the night was well along, but he wore no jacket, and the double row of pearl buttons on his blue flannel shirt shone occasionally in the fitful gleams of moonlight. The moon was working like a suffragette for its rights, but was continually being effaced by the clouds which were rapidly coming to monopolize the sky. If the breeze continued to increase Harry would, perhaps, compromise with it by getting out a thin sweater, but under no circumstances would he so far yield as to put on a coat. The matter of attire was his weak point, and his total absence of any interest in the scout regalia was the source of a great deal of sorrow to Gordon.

Once he tightened the thin book-strap which he used for a belt and put his belt ax into his canvas bag. Once he leaned and fastened the laces in his mooseskin moccasins. He was as slender as a boy could be without being noticeably thin,—gracefully slender, one would say.

At the present moment he was just passing from the stage of mild curiosity into that of anxiety for his young friend. For, making full allowance for delays caused by inquiries and for Gordon’s independent propensity to amble along in search of treasure, he was already very much overdue.

“I bet he shows up with a fifty-cent piece that he’s found, or a lady’s buckle, or a rusty jack-knife,” said Harry.

But Gordon did not show up with any of these things, and when an hour and a half had gone by and still he did not come, Harry became seriously anxious. He knew Gordon’s tendency to jump the track, as he called it, and he thought it not at all improbable that he would any minute hear, from the thicket, the hollow hand clap, merging into a rubbing sound, which so accurately simulated the noise made by a four-footed beaver. It had cost the patrol some trouble and not a little expense to get this sound from first sources, and learn to make it, and you might practise it a week and not fool a beaver; but Gordon had it pat.

So Harry did not think it wise to leave the spot for long at a time. At length, however, he tied a wisp of grass around a sapling, and concealing his bag in the undergrowth started down the road along which Gordon should come. A walk of fifteen minutes brought him to a house where a dog barked at him vociferously. He did not waken the inmates, for he knew that if Gordon had passed or called at the house, he would have heard the distant barking. Another fifteen or twenty minutes brought him to a ramshackle building, the home of one of the unprosperous farmers of the district. Here he made inquiries, but the farmer, roused from his sleep, was very brief and surly and had seen no one. Harry thanked him with unaffected courtesy and went on.

What surprised him most was that the occasional moonlight showed him no footprints. After a few minutes he came to a little opening at the left of the road and, straining his eyes, looked down through a vista of trees which ran through the woods at a direct right angle from the road. This reminded him that he had looked through a similar vista on the west side of the straight road on which he had gone north. So there was evidently a woodland track connecting the two roads he and Gordon had taken, which did not show on the map. Turning rather abruptly into this woodland byway were two wide concave tracks. He walked a little farther down the road and in a flare of moonlight discovered a perfect carnival of footprints. They faced in every direction, north, south, east, west. There were scoopy indentations showing the heel counter of a shoe, and little points in the ground, indicating the downward thrusts of a toe.

“There’s only one thing lacking,” said Harry; “I wonder where she waited.” He walked over to the stone wall and picked up a little reticule containing, on hasty inspection, sixteen cents, a handkerchief, and a bottle of smelling salts. This he thrust into his pocket. He also thrust his hands into his pockets and smiled.

“I bet he enjoyed this,” he soliloquized; “I can just see him standing here watching—and waiting for a chance to spring a good turn.”

He was perfectly satisfied that an auto had broken down. He picked out where a man had lain on his stomach, had knelt, had lain on his back. He put big prints and little prints together, like a picture puzzle, and made human attitudes out of them. And he concluded that this interesting exhibition, right in Gordon’s line, was accountable for the boy’s delay. The auto had evidently turned down the wooded byway in order to get into the better road. That Gordon should have abandoned his investigations to be carried to his destination in an auto seemed hardly probable, except on the theory that he was on the trail of a good turn. But what other explanation was there?

Acting on this theory, he turned back, sure that he would find Gordon waiting for him. When he was within hailing distance of the point where the roads converged he made the Beaver call, and was surprised that it was not answered. Presently he reached the spot. The rock was empty, the wisp of grass was as he had left it on the sapling. The moon was behind a cloud now, so he lit a match and examined the eastern road. There were the auto tracks, but running along one of these with lighted matches for fifty yards or so (covering the spot where the two roads met), he could find no interruption in the concave line. The auto had not stopped. It had gone straight on along the road which skirted Dibble Mountain.

Now, Harry was truly alarmed and more than perplexed. It was late at night, the moonlight was fitful and uncertain, it was more often pitch dark than not. He did not like to give up and rig his shelter for the night. Idly he picked up the empty raisin box. Above him rose almost sheer the grim, black side of the mountain. Soon he must eat something, at any rate, for he was cruelly hungry.

“Kid,” he said aloud, “where are you, anyway?”

And then, on the minute, the answer came. Over in the west—a mile—two—three,—he did not know,—there flickered a tiny light in the darkness. Presently it grew larger, then disappeared, then came again. Half interested, in his preoccupation, he waited for it to reappear. Now it came and went, rapidly, in alternate flashes. He looked behind him into the east to see if there were any answering light, but the flame came jumping out faster and faster, as if to say, “Look here, you—I have something to say—wait.” He waited, and when it came again it stayed, one, two seconds. Instantly he was on his feet. It disappeared and showed again for just a fraction of a second, then flared steadily, then showed for another fraction of a second. He watched it intently as it came and went. Now came a longer pause between the flashes.

And on the bottom of the little raisin box that Harry held he had written with the lead of a rifle cartridge the letters CAMP.

He did not write the arbitrary signs for translation later; he took the message in plain English, with never doubt or hesitancy, and in good time he had it all.

“All right, Kid,” he said, smiling; “glad to hear from you,” and dropped the cartridge into his pocket.

He was much relieved, of course, and very curious. Taking his pack and rifle, he ran up the road until he came to the first turn. The distant fire now burned steadily, though not as high as before, and he could see that the road he had reached must lead in its direction. He was to go down this road and watch any one he met. He hid his pack near the roadside, took his rifle, and crept stealthily along through the trees which bordered the road. His toes, free and pliant in their soft moccasins, pinned and held the twigs on which he stepped and he made no sound. Now and then a low, sudden scurrying told him that he had disturbed some smaller creature of the wood, but save for these trifling sounds he walked in perfect silence.

The moon edged slowly from behind a cloud. “That’s right,” he whispered, “bully for you—be a scout—come on out and help.” Perhaps the moon was influenced by his persuasive words and felt that such a boy on such a business and against such odds was entitled to all the help that she could give. In any event, she sailed majestically clear of her encumbrances and, as sure as you live, smiled a broad scout smile down upon Harry Arnold. “Now you’re talking,” commented Harry. “Keep it up and I’ll see you get the bronze medal—only keep it up.”

He crept up to the road and looked for footprints, but found none of recent making. His information was pitiably meager. A scout had been robbed, and it was evidently suspected that the robber or robbers had taken this road. That was all he knew. No one had passed here lately, that was sure. He assumed that the signalers had good reason to believe that some one had taken this direction. He figured that he could get to the vicinity of the fire inside of an hour. So it would work the same the other way. He would conceal himself and watch the road for an hour. If he saw no one, he would simply assume that the robber had not taken the open road.

Now, if he had carried out this plan, he would shortly have seen the two boys who had set out to find him. But Harry Arnold, Scout, was a mile off the road when these boys passed, and this is how it happened.

Before settling down to watch the road, he noticed a small bridge a few yards farther along under which a stream flowed. You could canoe from the Albany scouts’ camp to Lake Champlain on this stream, but Harry knew nothing of the Albany camp. For all he knew, the Morse message had come from the Oakwood scouts. In quest of a draught of water, he went stealthily down the bank. He knelt, looked at the water, felt of it, and shook his head. Then he stood on the brink of the stream with his two hands resting on the bridge, which was about level with his shoulder. Thus he craned his neck, looking up and down the road. Satisfied, he vaulted silently up to the planking. His spring was as graceful and agile as a panther’s. Instinctively, he looked down to see if he had left any sign, for it is part of the A B C of scouting to leave no clue behind, whatever your business, except what you leave for a purpose. There on the edge of the planking were the wet prints of his two hands. “Humph,” said he, and studied them closely. Then he knelt, felt of one, daintily, softly, and brushed his two hands together. “Dried quick,” said he. He leaped down to the bank and felt of the water.

“Tisn’t so muddy, either.” He placed his hands on the planking over the two marks. They did not match his. “I didn’t think I had a paw like that,” he said.

He looked beneath him on the bank where the dank grass was flattened. “Too clumsy to vault it,” was his comment. “One of those big gawking country jays, I guess.” He crept up the bank to the road, where the moonlight flickered down through the branches of a willow tree. Reaching up, he wriggled a broken limb, then smilingly kicked a small twig that lay in the road. Crossing, he found a ruffled place, half in the road and half in the bordering growths, where the brush seemed to be trampled down. All this he examined in an amused, half-careless way. Presently he took a short run and leaped across the road. “Easy enough,” he said. Stooping, he carefully examined the ground and rose triumphant, holding a small, flat paper package in his hand. “Maunabasha!” he whispered to himself. (Maunabasha was the good Indian spirit that occasionally smiled on his endeavors.) He lighted a match and read the lettering on the package:

FARMER’S FRIEND PLUG CUT

THE TOBACCO OF QUALITY

A SOLACE TO THE TIRED TOILER

THE AROMA OF THE HARVEST FIELD

Harry took a whiff of the aroma of the harvest field. “The harvest field could sue for damages on that,” he thought. But despite his scout prejudice against tobacco, he was forced to admit that this little package had done him a good turn. Here was the unmistakable proof of a human presence, and it had not been here long, for it was fresh, unstained, and dry.

He put it in his pocket and went down the bank into the long meadow grass that skirted the river. It was easy enough for him to see where some one had preceded him here. The tall bent grass showed the trail plainly. He plodded on through this marshy patch till presently he found himself on the dry, abrupt shore of the river. Naked roots projected here and there, worn smooth with the friction of feet, and he was able to pick out a beaten path which ran along the stream’s edge. But the earth was hard and there was no sign of footprint. Stooping, he examined the ground carefully and presently discovered something which brought him to his hands and knees. This was a little mark in the earth about two inches long, knobby at one end and pointed at the other, as if some one had attempted to draw a pollywog in the sand. But Harry knew it for the imprint of a nail. He took an ordinary stride and found another one—then another. There was no sign of shoeprint, for the earth was too hard, but he found the nail impressions, printed crosswise for, maybe, half a mile. Then one appeared lengthwise and he turned up from the path.

So far, so good. But here was a stubbly field with never sign of trail or footprint. He tied his handkerchief to a branch of a tree where the trail ended and walked straight ahead for a few feet until he discovered a dim light flickering through the trees, which proved to come from the upper window of a small, dilapidated house. Under the trees in the little grove which surrounded it, he saw a stooping figure. He advanced stealthily to the edge of the grove and watched. By the light from the window he could see clearly a burly country fellow of, maybe, twenty-five years, who drew something from his pocket and, lifting the edge of a flat stone from the ground, placed it underneath. Harry skirted the grove without making a sound and reached a point in front of the stranger and about fifty feet from him. Here he stood behind a tree, watching the fellow as he packed some loose earth under the edge of the stone. Then, gliding noiselessly from one tree to another, he presently stood before the stooping figure, now pressing the stone down with all the strength of both arms. He spoke in the low, nonchalant, half-interested tone that was characteristic of him:

“Hello, what are you doing?”

“HELLO, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

The fellow sprang to his feet, amazed at this apparition which seemed to have dropped from the clouds.

“M-me?”

“Yes, you—what are you doing?”

“Who are you, anyway—what are you doing here?”

“I’m standing here,” said Harry, quietly. His manner was easy and his voice low, almost sociable. “What are you doing, digging a hole?”

The fellow instantly became as excited as Harry was calm, and tried to hide his confusion under a torrent of abuse.

“I guess you’re one of them scout fellers that’s always puttin’ their noses in other folks’ business. Do ye know ye’re on private land? I thought them scout fellers had a rule not to trespass. You get out of this double quick, or I’ll fix yer. You can’t prowl round this farm in the middle of the night—you nor none of yer hifalutin crew. What are ye doin’ here, anyway—where d’ye come from?”

“How do you know ‘them scout fellers’ have a rule not to trespass?” asked Harry, gently.

“That’s all right, how I know.”

“You’ve met some of them?”

“None o’ your business!”

“You’ve seen one or two of them quite lately?” Harry asked, with just a touch of sharpness in his voice.

The fellow saw that he had fallen into a trap.

Almost in his first sentence he had admitted a knowledge of the boy scouts, and he stood embarrassed before Harry’s rather contemptuous smile.

“Are you goin’ ter clear out o’ this or not?”

“Not,” said Harry.

The fellow stooped and picked up a rock. Harry did not move. He dropped the rock and put his hand around to his hip pocket. Harry also put his hand in his hip pocket, and the fellow started back.

“Here, is this yours?” said Harry, tossing him the package of tobacco. “What’s the matter—did you think I was going to shoot you?”

They stood contemplating each other, Harry quietly amused, the other afraid to speak lest he say too much.

The countryman put the package in his hip pocket.

“I thought you had plenty of room there,” said Harry; “no pistol after all, eh? You see, you shouldn’t have picked up the rock. That was a bad move, because men with pistols in their pockets don’t pick up rocks. And I have nothing but this rifle and I’m not going to use it. I’d no more think of using it than I would of using that tobacco. The only dangerous thing you have about you is your ‘Farmer’s Friend Plug Cut,’ and it’s no friend to you either, for it gave you dead away.”

“You think you can come up here with your city gab, don’t you, and scare honest folks on their own land, that don’t trespass, nor ask no favors, neither.”

“The scouts been asking for milk—or maybe water?” Harry asked, smiling. “What made you think you might be tracked? Because you knew there were scouts about?”

“Who said I thought I’d be tracked? I ain’t a-scared to have my spoor follered—”

“Where did you learn that word—spoor?”

Harry’s voice and manner were now a little sharp. Every time the fellow spoke he was tripped up. The more he said, the more he gave himself away. The active mind of his inquisitor balked and confounded him, and he had no resource except in a tirade or an attack, and these he wished to avoid, partly from genuine fear of this strange boy, and partly because he had no wish that the altercation be heard in the house. Harry saw that he had him. And he went on, speaking in short, choppy sentences, looking the other right in the eye, and sending each word straight to its mark like an arrow. He had no more fear or hesitancy than if he were talking to an infant. The great creature who stood before him looked at him as a grizzly bear might look at its keeper.

“Look here now. In the first place, you didn’t come down the road. Why not? When you had to cross it, you tried to vault up to the bridge and went down like a bag of oats. Then you tried to swing across the road like a monkey and went down again like a bag of meal. Why were you so anxious not to leave a footprint, eh? Then, after all that trouble, you left the ‘Farmer’s Solace’—or whatever you call it—Plug Cut, and went down the bank marking out a trail as clear as Broadway. Then, when I show up, the first thing you tell me is the rules of the boy scouts? What do you know about the boy scouts? You’ve been trying to imitate them with your smattering about ‘spooring.’ Who said anything about spooring? Hold on, now—I know what you’re going to say. Of course, there’s no crime in all that. You can come down the road standing on your head for all I care, but just the same I’m going to see what’s under that stone.”

“I thought a scout feller was supposed—”

“Oh, a scout fellow is supposed to put this and that together,” Harry interrupted with some impatience; “and if you think I came here for the benefit of my health you’re mistaken.”

He stepped toward the stone and saw the other look apprehensively at the house. His predicament was a sore one, and Harry had foreseen and counted on it. If he precipitated a scuffle, it would rouse the inmates of the house. If he didn’t, the game was up. He fell back on the only course open to him—a weak attempt at explanation.

“Haven’t I got a right to pick up what I find, hey? What business have you got to trac—follow me, anyway? Haven’t I got a good right to bring home anything I find?”

Harry disdained to answer. Kneeling, he raised the edge of the stone. But the wretched boy who watched him could not quite stand by and see that done. He put his big hand on Arnold’s shoulder, and roughly thrust him back. Like lightning Harry’s hand was on his ankle. He tripped, staggered clumsily, and went down with a thud. When he had pulled himself together Harry was standing a few feet away examining his find, but keeping a weather eye on his new acquaintance. There was a wallet containing money and a letter. The wallet and the money he thrust into his pocket; the letter he read as best he could by the light from the window. It was dated several days before, and read:

Dear Walter,—

I have no objection to the canoe if Mr. Wade approves. You say several others have them. You had better take Al Wilson to Ticonderoga with you and be sure you are getting a good one. I should say the one you mention would be a bargain if it is in good condition.

Your examination papers are here and I want to talk over this matter of the mathematics with you. Suppose you run down home over Sunday. You could go back Monday or Tuesday, and I’ll give you the money while you are here.

Yours,

Father.

All this was a puzzle to Harry, for there was no Walter in the Oakwood troop. But he betrayed not the slightest surprise as he spoke to the other boy.

“So you stole Walter’s canoe money, eh?”

“I found it in the road,” was the sullen answer. “I was going to—”

“Sure you were—you were going to hide it. What’s the matter—afraid to let your folks know you found something in the road?” His tone was full of contempt now, and he paused, in a quandary what to do. He knew he could not arrest the farmer boy, and he was not sure that he wanted to. He did not know that the crime had been all but murder. His only feeling was that of disgust, and he surveyed the great, clumsy figure before him from head to foot.

“Go on into the house,” he said impatiently. “Who’s in there, your mother and father?”

“My mother.”

“Well, go on in and go to bed.”

“What are you going to do?” the wretched fellow asked desperately.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do, if you mean about you. I’ve got to consult my scoutmaster. Go on in and go to bed—How old is your mother?”

“She’s nearly seventy.”

Harry surveyed him slowly, contemptuously, from head to foot. He did not understand dishonesty. “Well, go on in,” he repeated, “and don’t wake her up. I guess you’re about through for to-night.” He paused, looking steadily, curiously, at the other, as one might look at a strange animal. Then he wheeled about and went silently off across the field.

“Blamed if I know who Al Wilson is, or Walter, either, but if they buy a second-hand canoe in Ticonderoga they get stuck. Jiminy, but that Kid’s the greatest! I wonder what he’s been pushing into now.”

Gordon squatted before the dying signal-fire, an occasional gape of stupendous dimensions distorting his round face. Below him the camp slept peacefully. The dim light glimmered in the invalid’s tent, occasionally blurred by the shadow of the “First Aid” boy moving to and fro. Gordon knew now that his mind’s-eye picture of Arnold arriving like a conquering hero was an extravagant vision. He knew that the Albany scouts knew it, too.

“Al Wilson could not have done it,” said he, “nor any of the rest of ’em. Nobody can do impossibilities. These fellows think it’s easy to bring a ca-a-a-a—” He was trying to say canoe and gape at the same time.

“Hello, Kid,” said a low, careless voice, almost in his ear. “What are you doing here?”

“Harry!”

“Sure—who’d you think? Where’ve you been, anyway?”

“But Harry—”

“Who the dickens is Walter?”

The younger boy clutched his friend by the arm. “Harry—I—he’s a boy here—they—did you—why—”

“I’ve got forty dollars belonging to him. What’s the news, anyway?”

CHAPTER X
THE SWASTIKA

In the morning it began, bright and early. Harry lay alone in the tepee, dead to the world. Mr. Wade had been quietly roused by Gordon and had accorded Harry this resting-place with strict instructions to pay no attention to reveille. Gordon had crept back among the sleeping Hyenas.

It started when the two boys who had gone in search of Harry returned to camp a few minutes after reveille, passing the Hyenas’ tent.

“How’s Walter?” they called to the one or two who had risen promptly.

“All right when we turned in. Any news?”

“No—couldn’t find a sign of his friend. He may have gone back to Ticonderoga. He didn’t come along this road—that’s sure.”

“Maybe he’s up on Dibble Mountain making rice puddings.”

“Keep quiet, you’ll wake him.”

All this Gordon heard in a delicious half-sleep.

“We met a chap on a bicycle from a summer place up Crown Point way—said he was hunting for a hand-bag a lady left on a stone wall—auto broke down and she sat on the wall to wait for them to fix it.”

“I haven’t it,” called one Hyena.

“You can search me,” said another.

“Guess she’ll never see it again.”

“Oh, she may, you can’t tell; the bicycle chap may find it. Nobody’s likely to have noticed it on a stone wall at night—it’s early yet. Honest, didn’t you hear anything of that Oakwood chap?”

“Didn’t we tell you, no?”

“Gone back to the log jam, I guess. The kid’ll be awful disappointed. He’s got the bee in his bonnet that his friend’s as clever as he is,—he’s a mighty nice little fellow.”

“Sure, it’s fun to see him grin when you jolly him. Wade’s stuck on him, all right.”

“Yes, and he’s got Al hypnotized.”

By this time the Hyenas were dragging themselves heavily from their cots and sleepily aiding the conversation.

“I’d like to know what was the use of sending that message, anyway. We might have known it wouldn’t do any good. Why, man alive, if any one did sneak down that road, it must have been an hour before we got the fire started. Chuck my belt over here, will you, Dan?”

“Well, it was good exercise, anyway. Oh, but my arm is stiff!”

The camp was soon astir, and Gordon, wrestling desperately to suppress his scout smile, came forth with the last stragglers. He stood in the fresh morning air, watching the routine, which began early. A boy with a pointed stick moved about, spearing papers and depositing them in a box for burning. “No news of your pal?” said he, as he passed. Gordon smiled and said nothing. Another boy was hurrying here and there, filling, trimming, and wiping lanterns. “Hello, Oakwood,” he called, “guess your patrol leader was asleep at the switch when we sent that little fire note—don’t you care.” Several others were rigging a rope fence outside Walter’s tent, where a Red Cross flag had already been raised. Everything seemed to move like clockwork. Two boys came in for firewood and departed for more. One was sorting and chopping the pieces. Others were setting the long table-board with plates, while the savory odor of coffee came from the lean-to. Gordon wandered among these early toilers, responding to a pleasant word or a good-natured taunt from each, fascinated with this first view of genuine camp life.

Mr. Wade sat at a small table under a tree, while several scouts hovered near, waiting his leisure. Al Wilson, standing at his elbow, beckoned to Gordon.

“Don’t you worry,” said he. “No doubt your friend is all right. I think he may have gone into Ticonderoga. Most of the folks around here know our camp, and I guess you’ll see him come walking in before the day’s over. And don’t think that he ought to have made good—it was impossible.”

“The fellows say you could have done it,” ventured Gordon.

“Well, I couldn’t. I might have made out the message, but that’s all the good it would have done me. None of us can do the impossible, can we, Mr. Wade?”

“Not as a rule,” said Mr. Wade, intent on his writing. Presently he handed three small pieces of birch-bark to a boy, on each of which was written in lead pencil, “10:30.” These were for the patrol leaders and meant, “Come to council.” Atwell, leader of the Hyenas, received his while helping to raise the colors, and was puzzled. Al read his in silence and was puzzled, too, but knew better than to question his chief. Frankie, leader of the Elephants, standing in the door of his tent, took his with great condescension.

“Frankie got a pretty picture card?” asked a passing scout. For answer, Frankie let fly a huge, overripe pear, which went to its mark with deadly precision.

“I suppose you know those Hyenas are a bunch of jolliers,” he remarked to Gordon, who stood near.

“I don’t mind that,” Gordon answered.

“Well, you would if you were I. But I’ve got a way to fix them. It’s my corporal’s idea. You’re going to be here through to-day, aren’t you? Well, you’ll see some fun. I’ve got to attend council at ten-thirty, and after that I’ve called a special patrol meeting to consider the plan.”

“Peek-a-boo, Frankie,” called a passing boy.

“That’s one of the worst of the lot,” said Frankie, confidentially.

“What’s the plan?” Gordon asked.

“You’ll see—it’ll be the Laughing Elephants by to-night.”

In a little while came the call to prayers, then breakfast. There was a camp historian in the Albany troop whose business it was to record the doings of each day and to read the entries of the day before, every morning before the campers rose from the early meal. Since the patrols often went about their pleasures separately and the boys were wont to wander off in pairs for a day of fishing, stalking, or exploring, it fell out that this record often contained matter unfamiliar to the camp as a whole, and so its reading was awaited with interest.

This morning, owing to the affair of Walter Lee, it would have a special interest. For Mr. Wade had been so much occupied during the evening and night before that none had ventured to question him.

When the meal was finished Henry Earle, the historian, rose at his place and, according to custom, first announced the camp routine for the day.

Plans for any special expeditions were submitted to Mr. Wade and then handed to Earle. From these he now read:

“The Raven patrol attends to the cooking from to-day until the 10th inclusive. Not more than two members to leave camp at one time for longer than an hour. No sentry duty. Collins relieved of all patrol duties because of troop duty.” (Collins was “First Aid” boy.) “The Hyena Patrol canoes to the Lake this afternoon for fishing. Elephant Patrol to accompany them for outing and assistance.” (Smiles from the Raven Patrol.) “Meals as usual. Camp-fire yarns to-night. Blake to go into the village for mail and errands; must have commissions and letters before eleven o’clock. Patrol leaders in conference with scoutmaster at 10:30. No leaves of absence for this evening.”

He thrust the papers into his pocket and took up his book. The brief record of Walter Lee’s return, with the circumstances, was read. Gordon’s name was mentioned without comment or compliment. The troop listened attentively.

“The suspicions of robbery were entertained,” Earle read, “because of a footprint and other signs near the chasm. The visit of two country boys to camp a few days ago and the conversation they heard about Walter’s visiting home to get money for a canoe were regarded with some suspicion. It was thought that the fugitive might have taken the road under the hill, and as the friend and scout partner of Gordon Lord was supposed to be waiting for him on the road under Dibble Mountain, a Morse signal message was sent up telling Lord’s whereabouts and asking him to watch the road. But the fugitive, it appears, did not take the road.”

At this sentence the boys started, and a stir of surprise passed round the board. Even the quiet Al Wilson looked inquiringly at Mr. Wade. Gordon wrestled valiantly with his scout smile, and looked straight before him.

“At ten minutes after two this morning,” the reader continued, “a scout, Harry Arnold by name, leader of the Beaver Patrol, 1st Oakwood, N. J., Troop, brought to camp and delivered to Mr. E. C. Wade, Scoutmaster, a wallet containing two letters and forty dollars belonging to Walter Lee.”

Murmurs of astonishment followed this announcement. Gordon’s eyes were riveted upon a distant tree.

“The full details of how he received and read the Morse message, made sure that no one had gone along the road, traced the robber by means of finger prints on the flooring of a bridge, and followed his trail over hard land by the print of a nail embedded in his shoe; how he came upon the thief in the very act of hiding his booty near his home, took it from him and brought it here; these details belong to the history of the 1st Oakwood Troop, Oakwood, N. J., and will constitute a glorious page in that troop’s annals.”

Gordon, still looking straight before him, had conquered his scout smile; yet he was not wholly victorious, for instead his eyes were brimming over.

“Where is he? Where is he, anyway?” shouted several boys, jumping up. Cattell rose, knocking over a cup, stumbled round the board, and clapped Gordon on the shoulder. “Where is he?” he shouted. “Let’s have a look at him.” Al Wilson came around and placed his arm over Gordon’s shoulder, smiling, saying nothing. Some one suggested the tepee, and it was not till a roystering, shouting group had started in that direction that Gordon got himself under control. They did not wait for him. They had forgotten him. But Harry Arnold, his chum, his friend, his idol, had made good, as he always made good, and they were going to honor him. This was joy enough for Gordon. Then, realizing what they were bent on doing, he rushed pell-mell in pursuit, and coming between them and the closed tepee, spread out his arms.

“You can’t go in, fellows,” he panted. “He’s asleep and Mr. Wade doesn’t want him waked up. He’s awfully tired—honest, he is!” Then, as they paused, he said, as if on second thought, and so as not to make their disappointment too heavy, “But if you come quiet, you can peek in and take a look at him if you want to.”

An hour later Harry sat down to a belated but welcome breakfast, served by enthusiastic Ravens who rejoiced in their special privilege to minister to his comfort. A continually changing group lolled about the long board, asking questions and commenting on his exploit. He answered all their questions in his easy, careless way, correcting when they overrated the difficulty of this or that.

“Oh, no,” he said, answering one of Al Wilson’s questions, “hard ground’s better than soft when there’s a loose nail in a shoe or anything sticking on the sole—there’s nothing hard about following that—anybody could do it.”

“That’s just like him! That’s just like him!” cried Gordon, excitedly.

His breakfast over, Harry wandered about, a dozen Albany scouts surrounding him. Gordon walked over to the boy who was clearing the table and whispered to him confidentially. “You can’t get him to wear a belt,” said he. “Red Deer tried to, and his corporal gave him an alligator-skin one, but he wouldn’t wear it—he just wears that book-strap. And we can’t get him to wear the scout uniform—he likes that blue shirt,—he’s very funny about some things.”

“Eccentricities of genius,” suggested Al Wilson, who stood near.

“He won’t even wear a coat,” said Gordon.

“Never mind,” said Al, “let him wear what he likes.”

There was never a happier boy than Gordon Lord that morning. In the excitement of Harry’s coming his own adventure of the day before had fallen into the shadow. No one spoke of that now, but Harry knew about it and had praised him, and that was enough. He was constantly near his friend, feasting on the praises which Harry, much to his discomfort, was forced to hear. The rule requiring a scout to “smile and look pleasant” was obeyed by Gordon to the full ability of his mouth. But the climax of his triumph was reached as they sat about under a huge oak waiting for the early dinner which was to precede the trip down to the lake. Harry lolled indolently on the sward, amusing himself with mumbly-peg, and occasionally joining in the conversation.

“Wonder if that bicycle chap found the bag he was after?” one said.

“Like enough—nobody’d see it in the dark and he was out early.”

“What kind of a bag was it, anyway?”

“Oh, kind of—this—what do you call it—mesh-work, he said.”

“Bottle of smelling salts in it?” asked Harry, as he twirled his jack-knife and sent it plunging into the earth.

The boys stared.

“Sure,” answered one of those who had met the bicyclist. “What do you know about it?”

Harry laid the blade of his knife between two fingers, eyed it critically, and struck the bone handle with the first finger of his other hand. The knife made four complete somersaults and landed upright in the grass.

“Handkerchief—sixteen cents?” said he.

“Sure!” cried the astonished boy.

Harry fumbled in his pocket, brought forth the reticule, and slung it by its chain to the boy who had spoken. Then he held his knife suspended vertically and, forming a ring with his thumb and finger about twelve inches below it, dropped the knife through the ring.

“Can you do that, Kid?” he said to Gordon, who sat near him.

“Where’d you get this bag?” asked the boy who held it.

“Picked it up on a stone wall near where there’d been an automobile accident.”

“How did you know there was an automobile accident?” chimed in another.

“Oh, I don’t know—just noticed it—that is, the signs of it—there was an auto, that’s sure, and somebody doing acrobatic tricks in the road. Who does the bag belong to, do you know?”

“Lady in Crown Point, that’s all I know.”

“We’ll have to hunt her up, Kid; here” (handing the knife to Gordon) “try this—it’s a good trick—I bet you pull your fingers away. This is the hardest one I ever did.”

“Then you admit there’s something hard you can do,” laughed Al Wilson, admiringly.

“Oh, yes,” Harry laughed back. “I’m the star mumbly-peg player—hey, Kid?” And he slapped Gordon on the shoulder. But Gordon was too astonished to speak.

The meeting of the patrol leaders with Mr. Wade had taken place earlier in the morning, but no one had been able to get a clue as to what it was all about. Frankie carried himself with an air of profound mystery—but that was for reasons of his own. Of course, Al Wilson knew, but you couldn’t pry anything out of Al with a crowbar.

The dinner hour came, and it was a merry company that gathered around the rough, tree-shaded board. The trip to the lake was discussed, talk of canoes, fishing tackle, and such things went round, and an occasional remark, in a particularly loud, significant tone, about Frankie and the Elephants, passed from one Hyena to another. But the Elephants paid no heed to these flippant observations.

When Mr. Wade rose from the table, he asked the entire troop to gather in fifteen minutes under the “assembly tree.” This was a spreading oak from whose low branches hung a variety of forest trophies, masterpieces of whittling and willowworking (the product of rainy afternoons), and other specimens of camp handiwork. About six feet from the ground a rough board with ragged ends had been fastened to the trunk, on which was carved the quotation:

And this, our life, exempt from public haunts,

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

This had been their meeting-place ever since they started camp. Here two of Frankie’s patrol, the Stetson brothers, having come from the city to join the scouts, had stood in the dim, solemn light under the thick branches, and taken the Scouts’ Oath to do their duty to God and country, to help others at all times, and to obey the Scout Law. Here Fred Brownell, Hyena, had stood before the Court of Honor and received from Mr. Wade’s hand the badge for marksmanship, which Frankie’s vote had helped to award him. For Frankie was incorruptible in the discharge of public duties, and his worst jollier could be sure of justice at his hands.

The full troop always gathered here for morning prayers and to sing the patriotic anthem when the sun went down. There was always a quiet atmosphere under this green roof, and the boys, as they straggled into the old tree’s shade, removed their hats and stood together in little groups. Harry and Gordon stood apart.

Presently Mr. Wade came out of the tepee and through the assembled boys to his usual place, directly under the rustic sign.

“Scouts,” he said, “it is written in the law that it is a scout’s duty to be useful and to help others, even though he give up his own pleasure or comfort or safety to do it, and that he is bound to carry out an order to the very best of his ability, and to let nothing interfere with his doing so.”

(“He means you,” whispered Gordon.

“Nonsense!” answered Harry.)

“If he be a good scout, he may conceive a mere suggestion, a hint, to be an order, and map out his own path of duty as if he were acting under command. The path may lead him among strangers. He may have to decide his duty, standing alone, without counsel, in the darkness of the night. But that is the law.”

(“He does mean you,” protested Gordon.

“Keep still, will you.”)

“The hint may come to him in such a way that an ordinary boy—I had almost said an ordinary scout—could not have known his duty from it. We are not all equally favored by Providence.”

(“There, what more do you want?” whispered Gordon, excitedly.

“Nonsense,” said Harry, blushing a little.)

“He may limit himself to the letter of the law if he chooses,” continued Mr. Wade, “but he usually follows its spirit. The path of his duty may wind its way through hardship or suffering or peril, but these things he will not see.”

(“Tha—”

“Keep still, I tell you!” whispered Harry.)

“If he be a scout favored by the gods and have the gift of prowess—”

(“That’s you, sure!”

“Oh, give us a rest!”)

“—the measure of his achievement may be large, and applause and admiration follow after him to pay him tribute.”

(Harry managed with difficulty to control Gordon.)

“The path may lead him to the wounded, the dying. It may bring him face to face with the guilty and the desperate.”

This time Gordon had no chance to whisper, for a shout went up that echoed back from the hill to meet another and still another, yelled out by a score of boys, who waved their arms and threw their hats in the air.

“Hurrah for Oakwood! Hurray for the Beavers! Hurray for the Beavers’ leader! Hurray for Gordon Lord!”

Mr. Wade’s upraised arm could not stem the tide, nor could Gordon turn it all upon his friend. His attempt to do so, the tendency that he had shown from the first, only increased their admiration and enthusiasm for him. It was as if a dam had burst and overwhelmed him—a dam which had been seeking vent for two days. Harry patted Gordon proudly on the shoulder.

“Hurray for Oakwood!” went up again and again. “Hurrah for Harry Arnold! Three cheers for Kid Lord!”

A rousing “tiger” was given, and then Mr. Wade motioned again for silence.

“I have been authorized by our three patrols,” he said, “represented by their leaders, to present to Harry Arnold, leader of the Beaver Patrol, 1st Oakwood, N. J., Troop, and to Gordon Lord, one of his scouts, the swastika badge of gratitude.

“These badges were made especially for our troop,” he went on, looking toward Gordon and Harry, “and were planned by us as a means of offering some grateful tribute to those who, whether scouts or not, may chance to do us some special service. Intrinsically they are mere trifles,” he said, holding up a small swastika of narrow band silver, “but they will serve as souvenirs to keep in memory deeds of which you two boys may be justly proud. They are given ‘lest you forget’ for your memories, it appears, are poor. One of you has already forgotten his achievement of last evening in praising the achievement of his friend; and his friend’s interest in mumbly-peg seems to be so great that he can remember little else.”

A general laugh followed this.

“He’s got eyes in the back of his head,” Frankie whispered confidentially, in Harry’s ear. “He’s on to everything.”

“These little testimonials of our admiration and gratitude are given you with the wish that you will remain with us as long as you can. But we realize that you are searching for your own troop, and we must not detain you long. It is the earnest request of our three patrols, who agree in this if in nothing else” (he glanced slyly at Frankie and at the Hyenas’ leader) “that you, at least, remain for camp-fire this evening and let us have you for our guests one night more.”

Harry stepped forward and received the little silver swastika badge in his easy, offhand, but not ungrateful manner; then Gordon, beaming with pride and delight, and smiling his scout smile from ear to ear. It was the first honor he had received from the Boy Scouts, and though many honors were to come his way, there was never another one which gave him just the same pleasure. And though he was destined to learn much, there was one thing that he never learned, and that was why, with such a fellow as Harry Arnold to admire, scouts, young and old (to say nothing of scoutmasters), loved to make him smile his scout smile and persisted in helping him, in jollying him, in liking him, and in cheering him like wild Indians whenever they got the chance.

CHAPTER XI
FRANKIE SQUARES ACCOUNTS

“Come, come, hurry up, Frankie! Don’t be all day! Are you all there? Where’s the Stetson twins?”

“Coming,” answered Frankie, as he and three of his patrol reached the shore. “What’s in that bottle?”

“Soothing sirup, in case you cry,” said a boy, who was bailing out the dory.

Frankie and his scouts got into the boat, and soon the Stetson twins (aged ten, the very youngest of the troop, and known as “tenderfeetlets”) came down. One of them, “Giant George,” was hardly big enough to see without a magnifying glass, if you care to believe Atwell, but he made up in fearlessness and resolution.

“There mustn’t be more than one boy in the boat with Giant George,” spoke up Brownell. “Mr. Wade says we must run no risks. Who’s willing to volunteer to paddle the canoe occupied by Giant George?”

“I’ll take that job,” said Harry Arnold.

“Got a good muscle?” asked Brownell, seriously.

“I guess I can manage it,” smiled Harry.

“All right; now, let’s see. Frankie, Corporal Tommy, Eddie Worth, and Charles Augustus Denning in the dory—here, Atwell, it’s up to you—get in and keep your eye on this bunch. Now, William Stetson, hop in the canoe there with Oakwood” (meaning Gordon), “and I’ll make up the trio.” This left four members of the Hyena Patrol, who got into the other canoe.

The stream flowed about a quarter of a mile from camp, and, passing under the three roads which had figured in the night’s adventures, wound through a beautiful, wooded valley into Lake Champlain. The dory, flying Frankie’s official banner ostentatiously at its stern, headed the procession, and the three canoes hovered about it, gliding easily upon the current. Now one of them would swerve near the majestic flagship to make some slurring comment on the Elephant Patrol, now dart forward like a playful child to await the squadron under low-hanging boughs farther down the stream. Now and again a lazy frog, startled by the passing pageant, dived into his muddy sanctum, and here and there along the way the birds complained to one another of this invasion of their domain. The scene was peaceful, quiet, and one might fancy the adventurous Champlain exploring these same woods in his own rough, Indian-paddled craft, many years before. Only, where the colors of France or the banner of the French Jesuits once grazed the overhanging branches, now the flag of the Elephant Patrol waved gayly and defiantly in the breeze. And never had the bold Champlain such a startling enterprise to carry through as the young leader of the Elephants.

Harry managed his canoe as an experienced driver manages his horse. He never appeared to exert himself. He never had to undo the effect of one stroke with that of another. “Giant George,” his sole passenger, sat in the bow and watched him with unbounded admiration. The canoe containing the four Hyenas had been skirting the shore and its passengers had been reaching out and plucking leaves or twigs or berries. Now one of them called out:

“Here, Giant George, have a pear?”

Giant George’s small hands went up to receive the luscious missile which bounded through the air.

“Ouch!” he said, as he caught and dropped it.

“What is it?” Harry asked.

“Burs!” Giant George answered.

“Sit in the middle, Giant George, and don’t bear down too hard,” came from Atwell, in the dory.

“Hey, Giant George, sit in the middle!” shouted Brownell, excitedly. “What are you trying to do, tip the canoe?” Others took up the cry, yelling at him to sit in the middle, till they had stirred up quite a panic. It was difficult to sit anywhere except in the middle, for Giant George was wedged into the bow where there wasn’t anything but middle, but he sat straight upright and was very much frightened. Then he began to shake the hand which stung him from catching the burs.

“Don’t do that!” came from a neighboring canoe. “My, but you’re reckless! Shake the other one too if you must shake!” Poor Giant George was very much frightened, until presently an assuring word came from Frankie.

“Splash some water on them,” he called. But Giant George would not budge.

“Don’t you mind them,” said Harry. “Suppose I lose you overboard and we’ll make one of those Laughing Hyenas go in after you.”

“I can’t swim,” said Giant George, promptly.

“No, I don’t suppose you can,” said Harry, looking the little fellow over with an amused grin. “But you don’t need to sit so straight, and you can shake your hand all you want to—they’re only joking you.”

“We’re going to get square on them,” said Giant George, encouraged by Harry’s show of friendship. “My patrol leader’s got a scheme to make them laugh on the other side of their faces; he’s awful smart—Frankie is.”

“What’s the scheme?”

“Well, I can’t tell you yet, but you’ll see. Will you stand by us?”

“Surest thing you know. I’m with the Elephants to the last ditch.”

“Hey, Oakwood,” some one called to Harry; “don’t let him jolly you. Here you go, Giant, catch this!” But Giant George was out of the business of catching things.

Presently Gordon’s canoe came alongside Harry’s, and naturally enough a race was in order. Gordon was much troubled. He did not want to be in the losing canoe, but he did not want to see Harry beaten. There was not much danger of this, however, for Brownell had plenty to learn in wielding the paddle. The two canoes shot forward, Brownell taking the lead and splashing water over his rival. Harry soon passed him, however, making neither sound nor spray, and a loud cheer went up, to the delight of Giant George, who was very proud of his companion.

Harry’s swift glide brought his canoe into a marshy basin filled with reeds, beyond which was Lake Champlain.

“Don’t push through there,” called Brownell; “run her up and we’ll cut across that little cape.”

The craft were all drawn up on the shore, and Gordon and Harry saw that a walk of some two minutes across a little grassy point of land would bring them out upon the lake. A beaten path ran here, and it was evident to the two Oakwood boys that this was the customary way to reach Lake Champlain.

“Now, Frankie,” said Atwell, “here’s your happy hunting ground; get busy and dig us some bait while we’re over having a soak.” The Hyenas, one and all, undressed, throwing their clothing into the boats and putting on their trunks. Gordon and Harry followed suit, wearing trunks which had been lent them by the Ravens.

“Come, Giant George, hurry up!” called Atwell, as George stepped gingerly from his canoe. “Who’s got the can, anyway?” The can was not to be found. “Well, that’s a nice fix to get us in, Frankie; here, let’s have that bottle—you’ll have to put the bait in that.”

“How’ll we get ’em out?” asked Brownell.

“Just whistle and they’ll come out.”

“Let’s have the bottle a minute,” said Gordon.

“Let him have it,” laughed Harry; “he’s got a way.”

And sure enough, he had. He placed the bottle between his knees, wound a piece of fishing line once around it just below the neck, pulled it rapidly back and forth for several seconds, then plunged the bottle into the water. The neck remained in the stream and Gordon handed to Brownell a perfect drinking cup, smooth and even where it had broken off.

“Good for you!” exclaimed Atwell.

“Isn’t he the greatest!” said Frankie.

“That’s nothing,” said Gordon.

“Here, Frankie,” said Brownell, “you and the youngsters get busy now. We’ll be back in half an hour and fish upstream a ways. Good-by, Giant George.” The group passed out of sight, and the Elephants gathered faithfully about their leader.

“That big Oakwood fellow’s with us,” spoke up Giant George; “he said he’d stand by us to the last ditch.” This was encouraging, for with the exception of Frankie, they were a little fearful and had a cowardly tendency to backslide. But the patronage of such a scout as Harry Arnold reassured them, and Frankie’s enthusiasm and resolve lent them courage.

“Quick, now,” said he, “one of them may be back any minute. Put your hand up inside my jacket, George. Feel that cardboard?” Giant George presently loosened from under his leader’s garment a large square of cardboard on which was printed:

THE ELEPHANTS’ COMPLIMENTS

TO

THE HYENAS

This was fastened to a tree in a conspicuous place, while other members of the patrol went through various extraordinary contortions to release from under the rear of their jackets other squares of cardboard, bearing a variety of significant observations:

CAMP TWO MILES

TAKE FIRST PATH TO LEFT

BEWARE OF PINE NEEDLES

AFTER YOU, MY DEAR HYENAS

TEN CENTS TO SEE THE

LAUGHING HYENAS LAUGH!

ELEPHANTS SUDDENLY CALLED

BACK TO THE JUNGLE

HAVE A LEMON, ATWELL?

DON’T FORGET SCOUT LAW,

“SMILE AND LOOK PLEASANT”

“Take one shoe from each pair,” Frankie ordered. “They can’t wear the other one, and it will make something for them to carry. Same with socks and stockings. And leave them one garter each. Now pitch the rest—everything—in the boat.”

In less than five minutes the tree trunks were decorated with signs and artistic representations of hyenas laughing, ironic directions for reaching home, and so forth. From one tree there dangled here and there an odd shoe, an odd sock, or a garter. A sign proclaimed this “The Shoe Tree,” and another sign invited the beholder to “Help Yourself.”

In one canoe they laid, in two neat piles, Harry’s and Gordon’s clothing, shoes and all, and upon them a sign which read:

FOR THE OAKWOOD SCOUTS

TO COME HOME IN

(BE SURE TO SIT IN THE MIDDLE)

Then, after Frankie had contemplated his work admiringly for fully half a minute, the Elephant Patrol pushed off the boat, and towing the two canoes behind, turned their prow gleefully upstream and rowed away with the official banner of the Elephants flaunted gayly at their stern.

Meanwhile, the afternoon “soak” had begun. The lake was narrow at this point and across the water they could see the Vermont shore rising gradually, and beyond the Green Mountains, onetime home of the adventurous Ethan Allen. The little Lake Champlain steamer, making a prodigious racket for its insignificant size, came tooting down, and a deckful of summer tourists waved their handkerchiefs to the boys. On the shore stood an old, disused railroad water tank (for the railroad hugs the shore here), and across the top of the butt which stood on lofty spindles the boys had fastened a springy board for diving.

Scarcely had they reached the shore when every one of them was splashing in the water. Gordon found it much warmer than at the sea beach where he was used to bathing. But he was a novice at swimming and, despite the pleasure he took in bathing, had been slow to pick up the art. He explained this by saying that he “tried to think of things” while in the water and could not give his undivided attention to it.

“What’s the matter, Oakwood?” Brownell asked, as Gordon came out, wiping the water from his eyes.

“My, but they smart!” answered Gordon.

“That’s because you keep them open when you go under—trying to pick up trails, I suppose.”

“Tails?” gasped Gordon, wringing out his hair.

“No—trails,” said Brownell; “didn’t you know you can follow a fish’s trail?”

Gordon grinned.

“Sure,” said Atwell, always to the fore when there was any jollying afoot; “that is, some fishes’; they say it’s almost impossible to follow a shark’s trail.”

“Stow that, Atwell,” said the Hyenas’ corporal. Then, turning to Gordon, “Better shut your eyes when you go under; guess you’re used to surf bathing, hey? Well, that’s the reason. The eyes are used to salt water—it doesn’t hurt them. Don’t you know the secretions of the eye are salty? Tears never hurt you, did they?”

This was plausible enough, but seeing that it was a Hyena who spoke, Gordon was on his guard.

“He never sheds tears,” called Harry, who was sitting astride the diving board. “Come on up and have a dive.”

Soon they were launching themselves, one after another, from the height of twenty feet into the lake. Brownell had the stiff dive to perfection, his straight body turning so as to bring his head down into the water like an arrow. Atwell did the “drop” to the admiration of all, falling limp and lifeless, till he almost reached the water, then straightening out like magic. The clown element was furnished by Gordon, who came up each time choking and sputtering, but with a grin always on his face. None of his calculations for reaching the water panned out, but he managed to get there each time in some fashion.

“What do you call that one?” one of the boys asked him.

“That’s the celebrated roly-poly tumble, I guess,” volunteered Brownell. “Here’s a good one.” He sprang sideways, maintaining the position till he almost reached the water, then swerved about.

“Good,” said Harry. “Ever do this one?”

He stood a moment on the end of the board, sprang high, turned a complete backward somersault, and sank into the water feet first and hands high in air.

“That was simply great!” Atwell shouted.

“Try this one,” said Harry, as he clambered off the ladder on to the plank. Placing his feet on the very end of the board, he allowed himself to fall to a horizontal position, rolled in the air like a hoop slightly opened at one side, and pierced the water turning like a wheel.

“Fine! Magnificent!” said Brownell, as Harry clambered up again to take his place beside the others who were sitting along the board with their feet dangling into the butt.

“That fellow over there,” said one of the Hyenas, “makes more noise than a ferry-boat.” He pointed to a canoe out in the lake which was occupied by a young man and a small boy. The boy was waving his handkerchief ecstatically in applause of Harry’s feat, and his companion was splashing the water with his paddle, apparently for the same purpose. As they watched, they saw the young man ship the paddle, rise, step toward the middle of the canoe, lift what appeared to be a red sweater and wave it. Suddenly he staggered, and the next thing the boys saw was an overturned canoe, a lot of paraphernalia, and two figures sprawling desperately in the water.

Harry had risen and without a single word walked across the knees of the other boys and disappeared, before the canoeists were really in the lake and before the other boys had moved. He did not stop to dive or even to jump, he simply walked off the end of the board. Then Brownell, who was at the outer end of the board, dived, but by that time Harry had almost reached the small boy, who was uttering pitiable cries. The young man had managed to get from deep water and stood chest deep near the farther shore, wringing his hands and screaming like a girl.

As Harry neared the boy the floundering figure disappeared and he waited. Presently it rose logily, heavily, the head back. “That’s right,” said Harry, “keep your head back and don’t move.” The only response was a scream and a panic-stricken clutch for Harry’s wrist. He loosened the small hand easily by turning his thumb against its wrist, but the boy’s two hands went convulsively to his neck, clinging desperately. He put his arm around the little fellow’s waist and his other hand, palm upward, under the chin, the tips of his fingers reaching the boy’s nose. Then he pulled and pushed jerkily. In a moment the little hands let go their hold. Like lightning, the boy was turned, almost brutally, as it seemed, and Harry was behind him again, his arms under the little fellow’s armpits, grasping each hand as it tried convulsively to clutch him, and making for the shore.

“Is he all right?” called Brownell, who, with one or two others, was almost across.

“Is he dead? Oh, is he dead?” gasped the young fellow who had been his companion. Harry paid no attention to the question, nor to the excited youth, but helped the boy to get rid of the water he had swallowed and tried to calm him.

“You’re all right,” said he; “and see how nice and clean your hands and face are. Where do you live?”

“He lives right up the hill in that handsome mansion,” volunteered the boy’s friend, who lisped and panted out his words excitedly with chattering teeth. He wore a gorgeous silk outing shirt, a neckerchief with ends tied loosely and hanging in a way of studied nonchalance, and a silly little trinket in the way of a compass hung on a lanyard about his neck. He was the true amateur camper, put together in a sporting-goods store, and now presented a ridiculous appearance as he stood shivering and dripping. Even his jack-knife, which might easily have been carried in his pocket, was suspended on a little silver hook from his belt.

“His people are extremely well-to-do,” he explained in his rapid, lisping voice. “I am a guest there myself; I have not the slightest doubt they will reward you suitably for your bravery.”

Harry surveyed him curiously, but did not answer. “What’s your name, sport?” he asked the boy, who was gradually getting possession of his senses.

“His name is Danforth—Penfield Danforth,” spoke up the summer sportsman; “he’s a delicate boy, father thinks the world of him, youngest child and all that sort of thing. Poor little codger, he seems to be quite upset. I—”

“Oh, let up,” Harry broke out.

“Pardon me?”

“He was upset, all right,” laughed Atwell.

“Yes, indeed, in more ways than one,” said the young man, smiling.

“Well, I guess you’d better take him home,” said Harry. “There’s your canoe down there under that tree; you can get it later. Take him up and get him something hot to drink.”

“I was very much impressed with your diving,” said the young man, “especially that last one—”

“I guess you can get him up the hill, all right?” said Harry.

“Indeed, yes, but I must ask your name. Mr. Danforth will, no doubt, wish to communicate with you.” He pulled out a little blank book with a red morocco cover, somewhat draggled from his plunge, and a pencil pocket along its edge. On the cover was printed in gold letters, My Summer in the Woods.

Harry eyed it amusedly.

“Your name, please?”

“Buffalo Bill,” said Harry.

“I’m afraid you’re joking. May I ask yours?”

“Daniel Boone,” said Atwell.

He dropped the book on its cord. “Well, we shall be able to find you anyway; you can’t hide your light under a bushel.”

Harry helped the boy to his feet, and watched the pair make their way up toward a large house with spacious lawns that crowned a hill a little way back from the shore. Then the boys swam across the lake and made for the little grove where they had left the Elephants.

“What the dickens is this?” said one. He was standing in front of a sign which read:

CAN’T GET AWAY TO DIG BAIT FOR

YOU TO-DAY, MY PATROL WON’T LET ME.

“And look at this one, will you?” said the amazed Atwell.

“Here’s another,” called Brownell.

They walked about reading the various signs which Frankie had lost a night’s sleep to manufacture.

“Well, what do you think of that?” said Brownell, as they stood surveying the “shoe tree.” “The little imps! I wonder how many pairs they’ve left?”

“Haven’t left any, of course; they’re all odd shoes.”

Meanwhile, Gordon and Harry had discovered the canoe and begun quietly to put on their clothes.

The others gathered about and looked on enviously. “You fellows must have a pull with Frankie,” said one. “Going to give us a ride home?”

“Two of you can come,” answered Harry, “two light-weights. I don’t think it would be quite safe with Brownell or Atwell.” He was not going to lessen Frankie’s triumph any more than necessary and he knew that these two were the chief targets of Frankie’s vengeance. Two of the Hyenas lost no time in getting in, and while the others were wandering here and there, ruefully surveying the Elephants’ handiwork, Gordon and Harry pushed off.

“Hey, Oakwood, take these shoes and things, will you?” came from the shore. But Harry was almost in midstream and making a great splash with his paddle, and was discreetly unable to hear.

Two hours later, Frankie sat on a camp chair before the Elephants’ tent, playing dominoes with Giant George. His faithful corporal stood at his elbow.

“Here they come,” said Giant George, in an undertone. Frankie glanced covertly up at a sight which gladdened his heart. The Hyenas, in their bathing trunks, each one carrying a single shoe, were straggling to their stronghold. The perspiration dripped from them, for the heat was intense and their long walk home had been under a broiling sun. The Elephants had thoughtfully relieved them even of their hats and caps.

Mr. Wade and Al Wilson stood in the path, talking. The scoutmaster had a twinkle in his eye as the procession passed, and even the sober Al could not repress a smile.

“What are you going to do about it?” he asked.

“Nothing,” said Mr. Wade, chuckling. “I don’t want to be drawn into these political broils.”

CHAPTER XII
SHADES OF THE GREEN MOUNTAIN BOYS

During the boys’ absence, a doctor from Ticonderoga had visited Walter Lee, and pronounced his injuries comparatively slight, predicting a quick recovery. A sheriff had come out with him, secured the best description he could of the robber, and, satisfied who the fellow was, had gone in search of him. But the bird had flown, as he informed Mr. Wade on his way back. Harry was not altogether sorry to hear this, for he had not been able to get the wretched young man’s mother out of his thoughts.

That night as they sat around the camp-fire the conversation turned upon the history of the old Fort Ticonderoga and its capture by the patriot, Ethan Allen, in the early days of the War of Independence.

“He was a queer old fellow,” said Mr. Wade, who was always “great” at camp-fire, “but I’ve never been able to make out how he did that trick. There he was, a backwoods farmer, up in Bennington, Vermont, which was then a wilderness, with a pack of lumbering backwoodsmen following him about. Why, half of them didn’t have firearms, and half the guns they had didn’t work. I understand they used to use their swords to hoe potatoes. A uniform would have been a curiosity. They were simply a parcel of big, burly, ignorant farmers, strong just as an ox is strong, and almost as stupid. Allen had some wit, though. Well, finally the news works up that way that the colonists are going to war. Up jumps old Allen, and says he, ‘Come on, let’s go over there and take those two forts. Crown Point and Ticonderoga.’

“They were loafing around the village store, talking about liberty and tyranny and all that sort of thing. ‘It’s a go,’ said Seth Warner, who was as reckless as Allen himself. ‘I’m with you,’ piped up the sheriff. ‘Me too,’ called another, and they got ready, chose Allen leader, and came right down through to Shoreham, opposite Ticonderoga.—Put another log on the fire, and rake her up a bit, will you, Cattell?

“Well, sir, there was one man who happened along, and he had some military training, but they had no use for him—said he was nothing but a soldier, and that was young Benedict Arnold, who turned traitor before the end of the war. But they let him go along. Now, history tells us that this pack of rough farmers, I don’t know just how many, brought up on the shore right opposite Ticonderoga and Allen made them a great speech. Then they appropriated a few dories that happened to be moored about, for transports.

“That was long after midnight. They kept crossing and recrossing till daylight, bringing the men over. You know, the fort, garrisoned by English regulars, was scarcely two hundred feet from the shore. And this thing was going on right under Captain Delaplace’s nose till daylight. Then the whole crowd started up the hill, overpowered the sentry, marched in, and Allen called upstairs for Delaplace to come down.

“‘What for?’ says Delaplace. ‘For me,’ says Allen; ‘I want the surrender of this fort.’ ‘In whose name?’ called down the Captain, his nightcap bobbing over the stairs. ‘In the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress,’ shouted Allen. And according to all accounts, the Captain immediately surrendered the fort. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, Seth Warner finished the job by taking Crown Point Fort in the same way. And the Americans held them till General Burgoyne came down through this country and retook them.

“Now, all things together, I say the whole thing was impossible!”

“It was done,” said Al Wilson, quietly.

“I know, Al,” said Mr. Wade, “but it was impossible just the same—couldn’t be done.”

There was a great laugh, and Fred Brownell said: “You’re like the old farmer that went to the menagerie and saw a camel for the first time. He’d seen dromedaries with one hump before, but when he came to the real camel with two humps he stood and looked at it for a few minutes in amazement with his mouth wide open. Then he let out, ‘Gosh, ther ain’t no such animal!’”

“Those farmers were full of patriotism,” ventured a boy, when the laughter had subsided.

“Yes, and patriotism will carry one a long way,” said the scoutmaster; “but I could never understand that capture—that and Paul Jones’s victory. We’ll look over the ground when we go down there; the doctor told me this morning that he’d see if he couldn’t get us permission to camp a week or so right in the old fort. They say an old underground passage to the lake is still there.”

Harry had listened carelessly to all this, but now an idea came to him.

“You mean to camp in the old fort, sir?” he asked.

“That’s the idea, if we can get permission. We’ll pick up here about the middle of August and spend our last two weeks on historic ground. You know, they’ve been restoring the old fortress after a fashion. A patriotic woman became interested in it, and they’ve made quite a fort of it. You two boys ought to see it. You know, old Ticonderoga has a great history. It played a part in the bloody French and Indian War, passed from the French to the English, then to the Americans when Ethan Allen took it, then back to the English when Burgoyne took it, then finally back to the Americans again. And now the Boy Scouts propose to occupy it!

“We’ll explore the old Trout Brook where young Lord Howe was killed by the Indians. I believe I can pick out the very spot.”

“Then you do admit Ethan Allen took it?” smiled Harry.

“Well, in a way,” laughed the scoutmaster, “according to history, yes; according to reason and common sense, no.” Then, more seriously, he added, “There are some things in history, freakish things, which are theoretically impossible, but which are done. Paul Jones’s great battle is one. The storming of Stony Point by Mad Anthony Wayne is another.”

“Washington put him up to that,” protested Al Wilson.

“No, he didn’t, Al; Washington told him to go ahead if he wanted to, and Wayne, who was as crazy as a March hare, went ahead.”

“And succeeded,” finished Al.

“Yes, but logically he oughtn’t to have succeeded,” laughed Mr. Wade, “and Ethan Allen ought not to have succeeded. There was something wrong somewhere. If I were a military man and had a force of regular soldiers under me in that old fort, do you suppose a pack of undrilled backwoodsmen could land under my very nose, fire off a patriotic speech, and take the fort without the loss of a single life or the shedding of a drop of blood? No sirree!”

They all laughed at his good-natured vehemence, and he laughed himself, for at such times he was no more than a boy among them.

“Oh, but it was great, though!” cried Gordon. Harry said nothing; he was idly whittling a stick, and thinking. He hoped Gordon would not have the same thought, and blurt it out. He was thinking that if this thing could be done once without the shedding of a drop of blood, it could be done again.

“The last two weeks in August,” he said to himself. “I wonder what Red Deer will think of it.”

It was natural enough after this that the camp-fire “yarns” should turn on the history of the famous lake, of the old forts at Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and the story of the reckless, adventurous Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys. Thus the evening passed, the cheerful fire crackling and lighting up the solemn woods and shining upon the faces of the merry company. They sat later than usual, in honor of the two guests who were to bid them farewell in the morning.

Gordon and Harry had the tepee to themselves, and the next day, early, they took their leave of the hospitable camp. But first they went in to see Walter Lee, who was to sit up that day. They had seen but little of Collins, the “First Aid” boy, and now the three sat about the injured scout’s couch and talked. Harry liked Collins immensely. When they rose to go and had shaken hands with Walter, Harry lingered a moment. “I want to ask you a question,” he said. “You remember when you passed us in the train, you made me the full salute? How did you know I was patrol leader?”

Walter’s hand went up to a slightly frayed buttonhole in Harry’s flannel shirt. “I guess that’s where you fasten the lanyard of your patrol whistle, isn’t it?”

Harry smiled. “You’ll do,” said he.

Gordon paused to lean down and speak confidentially to the invalid. “We can’t make him wear a belt,” he said, “and he won’t wear a khaki coat, either. He’s very funny about some things; well, good-by.”

Mr. Wade gave them a letter to be delivered to Dr. Brent, alias Red Deer, and bade them a hearty good-by, with many hints to be used in their search for the needle in the haystack. The three patrols stood together and gave them a great send-off. But not the full troop, either, for seated by the roadside over the hill, they came upon Frankie and his faithful follower, Giant George.

“What did you think of that scheme yesterday?” said Frankie.

“It was great,” answered Harry.

“I thought up all those signs,” Frankie continued.

“They were very clever, too,” Harry said.

“I thought up that about the odd shoes, too.”

“That was the best part; well, good-by, Frank.”

They had gone perhaps a hundred yards when the piping voice of Giant George was heard in rebellious altercation with his leader, and presently a frantic shout from him brought them to a halt.

“I thought up that about the odd garters!” he shouted.

“Good for you, George!”

CHAPTER XIII
AN EXTRAORDINARY INVENTION

(Patent not applied for)

They cut up through the woods where Gordon had picked his way to the Albany camp, for he wanted to show Harry the chasm and the path he had taken.

“Now, Kid,” said Harry, “you will be kind enough to keep your beautiful brown eyes straight ahead, or by the great eternal sphinx I’ll put a pair of blinders on you. No more pink arrows! Just look ahead and listen to me. We’ve got three things to do, and one of them is right in your line. First, we’ve got to strike Crown Point and find the elderly lady who lost this bag.”

“How do you know she’s elderly, Harry?”

“On account of the smelling salts. Then we’ve got to find the troop, and if all goes well I’m going to give Mr. E. C. Wade the surprise of his life. How would you like to be Ethan Allen?”

“What!” said Gordon, the idea suddenly dawning on him.

“Well, now,” Harry continued, “Ethan Allen was like you; he was the kind of a fellow who could find a way.”

“That’s like you, Harry.”

“Well, but he liked to talk and make fine speeches, too, so I think it’s up to you. Anyway, I’m going to put the idea up to Red Deer, if we can root him out, and see if we can’t plan an assault. We’ll reconnoiter the locality, send a couple of scouts in, then go over into Vermont, transport our men in dories right under Mr. Wade’s nose, gag his sentries (he’ll have some out, you can wager), and enter the fort, call upstairs and give him Allen’s speech about Jehovah and the Continental Congress. Exactly how we’ll take the fort is a thing I’ll have to think out and talk over with Red Deer. But so far, how does it strike you?”

Gordon was radiant. “It’s great, Harry! It’s simply fine! And I read in a book—the school history—that after it was all over Ethan Allen and Seth Warner made a trip to Philadelphia and received the thanks of Congress; and we’ll do that too, Harry, we—”

“I don’t just see how we could do that,” said Harry.

“Yes, we could, Harry; there’s a way. My uncle belongs to a club where there’s a man who knows a senator, and he—”

“Now just come down to earth,” said Harry. “Do you suppose Allen was figuring on the thanks of Congress before he did anything? You’re a nice kind of patriot!”

They had reached the chasm and explored it together. Harry found a strip of wood which had evidently held the three logs together when they spanned the gully, and found that it contained several nails exactly like the telltale one whose impressions he had followed. He even found another one lying in the mud.

“It’s seldom a man commits a crime,” he said, “without either taking or leaving something that he doesn’t mean to. Sometimes it isn’t large enough to convict him. Sometimes it’s so small that it escapes notice. But a hundred to one, he takes or leaves something. Come on, let’s get away from here. You did great work, Kid.”

That was the last that Harry ever said, voluntarily, about the sordid crime. He seemed disgusted at all mention of it and anxious to forget it.

Emerging on the road where Gordon had seen the pink arrow, they started north for their belated ascent of Dibble Mountain. Their purpose was to get an outlook from its summit and go down its northern slope into the little village of Crown Point. They had almost reached the point where the stream ran under the road in its journey to the lake, when they heard voices ahead, and presently came in sight of a country boy leaning over the railing of the bridge and talking to some one below.

“Never heerd o’ no sech feller outside a book. I seen a book onct with a guy by the name o’ Dan’l Boone onto it, but I never heerd tell o’ no sech a feller in these parts; there’s a Dan’l Berry over to Hammondville. How’s that?”

A voice answered from below, but Harry and Gordon could not hear what it said.

“Oh, why didn’t ye say so?” the country boy called down. “Kind o’ play-actin’ folks, was they?”

By this time the boys had reached the bridge. Underneath, rocking gently in the water, was the handsomest motor boat that Harry Arnold had ever seen. Its brass trimmings shone dazzling in the morning sunlight. Cushions of scarlet plush covered its seats, their vivid color thrown into relief by the color of the boat itself, which was as white as snow. Also as white as snow was the mustache of the gentleman who occupied it, and the eyes which met those of Gordon and Harry as they looked down were genial with just the suggestion of a humorous twinkle. He wore a linen suit, very much wrinkled, and very much wrinkled, also, was the kindly face, and rather scanty were the gray locks that showed under the little blue yatching cap which he wore. A young man in chauffeur’s attire sat near the engine with his hand on the steering-gear.

“Good morning,” said the gentleman. “How far can I get with this thing?”

“Not much farther, I’m afraid,” answered Harry. “How much does she draw?”

“Now, you’ve got me,” said the gentleman, laughing. “How much does she draw, Pat?”

Pat shook his head.

“She draws about twenty dollars a week in the summer,” said the gentleman, “and if she were mine, I’d discharge her.”

“What seems to be the trouble?” laughed Harry.

“The trouble,” responded the gentleman, merrily, “is between herself and my son—it’s not my quarrel. She is occasionally taken with carburitis, which is a complaint of the carbureter. To-day she’s doing very nicely, thank you. Do either of you boys know where the Boy Scouts have their camp—how far up this stream? I’m trying to get to them.”

“We just came from there,” Harry answered. “They’re about two miles up, but I’m afraid you’ll have to foot it. It’s pretty shallow and rocky from here on.”

The gentleman put on his glasses. “Oh, yes,” said he, “I might have noticed. Is that a blue shirt you’ve got on? The sun is right in my eyes—you tall fellow, I mean?”

“It’s supposed to be blue,” laughed Harry.

“He’s got a khaki one,” added Gordon, “but he never wears it.”

“You belong up there, I suppose?”

“No, sir, we’ve been making them a visit. We’re a couple of tramps just now.”

“Is that a leather wristlet you’ve got?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, just come—no, wait a minute—I’ll come up there.”

“Stay where you are, sir,” answered Harry. “We’ll come down.”

He led the way down as if he expected to be charged with a crime. He suspected what was coming.

“Come in here, my boy—you too. My name is Robert E. Danforth. I have a place across the lake. You saved my boy’s life yesterday—don’t attempt to deny it! You’re the very boy I’m looking for. Did you give your name as Buffalo Bill? You did—don’t deny it! Who are you, anyway? Why didn’t you come up to the house so that we could thank you? Do you realize what you did?”

Harry had hoped that he might hear nothing more of the incident, but there was nothing now for him to do but face the music.

Mr. Robert E. Danforth, according to gossip, had begun life with nine cents, and he now had nine million dollars. It was not likely that such a man would permit the modesty of a boy scout to stand in the way of his purpose. And his purpose now was to make suitable acknowledgment to the boy who had saved his little son’s life. In the winter Mr. Danforth worked very hard; in the summer he played very hard, and this was his play season.

He would hear of nothing but that the two boys should go back with him to Overlook, his magnificent estate on the Vermont shore. So the boat’s prow was turned downstream and the little craft went chugging out through the reedy basin and across the lake toward a beautiful boat-house surmounted by an octagonal cupola, in one of the open arches of which they could see a small figure. They were halfway across when suddenly a white object shot from the cupola and dropped into the water a few feet from the boat.

“Get it, Pat,” said Mr. Danforth, and the boat was steered over to the floating object, which Harry reached for and secured. It was a little aeroplane, crude enough in construction, having a plane about twenty inches long, on which dried glue, somewhat sticky now from the plunge, appeared in untidy masses. But as Harry lifted it, the propeller, which was nothing but one of those celluloid fans which shoot into the air when twisted from between the hands, began to revolve with a steady, even motion, continuing for fully half a minute. Mr. Danforth smiled as Harry examined it.

“He thinks he’s going to revolutionize juvenile aeronautics,” said the father.

“Well, I don’t know but what he will!” said Harry. “What is this, anyway?”

“It’s the alarm apparatus from a clock.”

The mechanism was bound with thread under the center of the plane. The brass frame which encased a set of clockwork had been filed into and broken off, so that nothing was left but a little corner of frame holding a small clock spring, one little cogwheel, and the catch and release teeth which create and govern the vibration of the upright striking bar. The little metal knob, or striker, on the top of the bar had been twisted off and, since its weight modified the striking action, its removal created an excess of power which was here taken up by the propeller. This latter was rather clumsily connected with the mechanism by a light, flat-linked brass chain which ran around the cogwheel. The trouble with the whole affair was its weight, which, though small, might easily have been reduced still further.

They had now reached the boat-house, where the man jumped out and hauled the craft in between two others, one a beautiful steam yacht. The other, about the size of an ordinary rowboat, was covered with canvas. The little boy whom Harry had rescued met them on the stairs, his eyes glistening with tears.

“It’s the twenty-third time it wouldn’t go,” he said.

“Never mind, my boy,” said his father, putting his arm affectionately over the little fellow’s shoulder. “Maybe it will go next time.”

“Twenty-three’s a hoodoo number, anyway,” added Harry. “Why do you send it over the water?”

“Because if it flies across the lake, I’ll win the cup. But it won’t—it never does.”

“Well, Pat will row out and get it for you every single time,” said his father, soothingly.

“It’ll get spoiled—it’s spoiled now—the ones you buy go.” He almost broke out crying, and Mr. Danforth looked as if the little fellow’s disappointment actually hurt him.

“I was all this week and two days of last week making it—and it’s spoiled.” He set his lips tight in a manly effort to control his distress.

Harry stepped forward, placing his arm over the boy’s shoulder as his father had done. “You remember me?” he said in his quiet way. “Well, now, you listen a minute. Never mind if your machine is spoiled, you’ve still got the idea and it’s a mighty good one, too. You can work it up again and make it still better.” He smiled encouragingly and patted the little fellow’s shoulder. The father was delighted.

“Hear that, Pen? This is the boy who got you out of the water yesterday—come to see how you are—maybe he can give you some ideas. Take him up to the aviation tower and show him things—show him the cup.” He winked at Harry. “I want you boys to stay here till to-morrow,” he called after them as Penfield led the way upstairs, “as a favor to me.”

“I’m afraid we’ll never find our friends unless we get about it,” Harry protested.

“Well, one day won’t make any difference. I want a chance to talk to you. Come up to the house when you’ve seen his den.”

Penfield led them into a little octagonal room, littered thick with shavings, pieces of silk, tangled masses of reed, and a fishing rod which had been laid under contribution for strips of bamboo. Magazine cuts of the various types of air craft, the Curtis, the Voisin, the Cody, and the Wright, were tacked on the wall.

“That’s the Voisin,” said Penfield, excitedly, as Harry stood before the picture. “It looks like the Wright, but it isn’t, it’s got more longitudinal stability on account of the enclosed ends and partitions. But it can’t coast like the Wright. I like monoplanes best, don’t you? That’s the Bleriot. You can flex the tips of the planes, that’s one thing about it I like. Pat likes the Antoinette model, but I don’t. The Curtis is my favorite,—only, of course, that’s a biplane. You can’t make a toy biplane fly, it needs too much control. But the Curtis is my favorite. It’s the lightest of all, but that isn’t why I like it. And it has the best finish, but that isn’t why I like it, either. It’s the control; you lift and decline the fore planes by shifting the steering wheel. And the balance is controlled by moving your body sideways. Isn’t that a dandy idea? But I like the Wright brothers—my, I’d like to see them!”

“Well, they began just like you,” said Harry.

There was one thing he noticed in particular as he picked up the broken and unfinished models that lay about. The most common, everyday objects had been used for some practical purpose. A circular typewriter eraser acted as wheel to a cog chain. Metal paper clips were used to hold joints. The circular, hollow bar of a gas jet held together and served as ferrule and fore-weight to the three dowel sticks forming a motor-base. The boy seemed to have his own way of doing everything, and everything he had done was ingenious.

On a rough bracket, six feet or so above the floor, stood a battered pewter stein.

“That the cup?” Harry asked.

“Yes, that’s it, but I can’t touch it—not till I’ve won it.”

“Who offered it?” Gordon asked.

“I did, but I make believe it was a club. I’m trying to win it—it’s a trophy. I can’t even touch it till my monoplane flies across the lake.”

Gordon would have laughed, but he encountered Harry’s look, and refrained.

“Well, now, let’s see,” Harry said, sitting down and taking the little model on his knees. “I think we’re just the fellows for you. You’ve heard of the Boy Scouts, I suppose. Well, we belong to the Scouts of Oakwood, New Jersey, and there’s an aero club in our troop—”

“Oh, my father’s building a house there,” cried the boy.

“Where—Oakwood?”

“Yes, we’re going to live there this Fall when it’s finished. We’re not going to live in the city any more.”

“Do you suppose he means the big house they’re putting up on the hill?” Harry asked of Gordon.

“Yes, it’s on the hill,” Penfield spoke up, “and I’m going to sleep outdoors.”

“Well, that’s news,” said Harry. “I wondered who was putting up that house.”

“Yes, and may I join your aero club—if I make one that goes?”

“You certainly may!” said Harry. “You can join the troop, and then if you are interested in aeroplanes you can join the little club six of the boys have formed. There’s going to be a big meet in Oakwood this Fall; any boy that lives in the county can enter his ’plane—provided he made it. I believe the Oakwood News is offering a cup, too, isn’t it, Gordon? I don’t know very much about aeros myself.”

“He does too,” said Gordon.