always full of business.

While Hugh and his chum lay there under the big oak and cooled off, a sudden gust of wind came sweeping along the street, causing the dust to rise.

“Whee! Look at the old scraps of paper and stuff flying through the air!” exclaimed Billy, laughing at the flurry the puff of wind had created. “Honest Injun, I do believe what some of the visitors at the hotel say: that we have the dirtiest little city of its size in the whole state! It doesn’t seem as though anybody cared a rap what goes on here. In nearly every street you’ll find paper blowing into fence corners, and all sorts of rubbish lying around. I sometimes blush for my town when anybody visits at our house from other places where the mayor is wide-awake and does things.”

“You know that the women tried to take it in hand a year ago. They’ve got a club called the Town Improvement Association, and for a little while they really did make a dent in things. Those tall cans with the letters ‘T. I. A.’ on them were bought and placed everywhere about. But does anybody bother putting papers and trash in them? Well, hardly ever. Watch that farmer coming along, and you’ll see just the sort of spirit that seems to have gripped the whole place by the throat. Everybody’s doing it, they say, and so they follow suit.”

Evidently the man in the farm wagon had brought a lot of tomatoes to market for which he had been unable to find a purchaser at any price. Perhaps they were not fresh, and as he was now going home and had no desire to burden his horses with an unnecessary load, he began deliberately to turn the crates over and allow the contents to trail in the road after him, doubtless expecting that the Italian children would immediately get busy and pick them up.

There was something like a rush and scramble for the spoils, but when the dust had settled again it could be seen that quite a number of the tomatoes had been crushed underfoot or refused as unworthy. At any rate, there they lay by dozens, only adding to the untidy condition of this, one of the streets leading into the main thoroughfare of the town.

The two scouts exchanged looks.

“That’s the way it keeps on going,” remarked Hugh with a shrug of his shoulders. “You see, we have quite an Italian population now, and somehow those people never seem to know the first thing about keeping things tidy. Perhaps they’ve had no one to show them. I sometimes think that the scouts will have to get busy and see what they can do about it.”

“Say, that’s a great scheme, Hugh!” exclaimed Billy, sitting up suddenly as if he had received a shock from a battery. “We’ve done a good many things that called for praise from the citizens of our home city; perhaps we might be able to set this thing working. Take the matter up, seriously, won’t you, Hugh? Propose something along that line to the boys at the meeting to-night. As sure as you live, I believe they’d jump at it like wildfire. And say, maybe the women folks would back us up if we started in to clean the town. Do you really think it could be done, Hugh?”

“If we had a fair show, I believe we could manage it,” replied the other thoughtfully; “but it’s sure to set people talking. I know a gang of boys who’d make all manner of fun to see the scouts acting as scavengers, picking up paper, asking people not to throw things around, and trying to start a ‘clean-up week’ here like they have in lots of places.”

“Hugh, when you speak of boys acting that way, I guess you don’t mean any scouts, do you,—Alec Sands, for instance, who used to oppose nearly everything you started?” Billy questioned.

“Oh! Alec is a good friend of mine these days,” replied the other; “and I hardly believe we’ll ever go back to the old conditions again. I was thinking of the one boy in town who seems to scorn the scouts and say all sorts of mean things about us,—Lige Corbley, you know.”

“Oh! you’re right about him! He is the worst boy in town this summer,” said Billy, shaking his head. “I never can understand that fellow. He’s as smart as they make ’em, only he has a bitter tongue in his head, as if he was born with a grouch against everybody that tries to be decent. Yet I’ve seen him carrying that little crippled brother of his across the muddy street, and say, it couldn’t have been done more tenderly if it had been you! Yet he’d as soon fight as eat his supper. And so you kind of think Lige would give us a heap of trouble, do you, if ever we started to clean up the town?”

“Well,” Hugh replied, “he has a few boys about as bad as himself trailing after him in a sort of gang, and I expect they’d try all they could to upset our work for us. But if we have the women of the place and public sentiment back of us, we might be able to make a decent showing. I’d want to consider our chances well before making a start. Scouts don’t like to be looked down on as failures. Once they put their shoulders to the wheel, they want to see things move.”

“If only we had a mayor with any sort of backbone, things could never be done like that clodhopper of a farmer dumping his waste tomatoes out of the tail of his wagon along the road! Well, I should say not! I sometimes wonder if it would make any sort of change if the women did get a vote here and we had a woman for mayor!”

At that mental picture, Hugh laughed loud and long.

“Honest, I’d like to see the day that happens,” he remarked seriously. “Things couldn’t be any worse, and chances are they’d improve a thousand per cent. Men get so shiftless. Any old thing does for them, rather than have a lot of trouble. They think they get enough of that during spring cleaning or moving time.”

“But you’ll bring the matter up before the boys to-night, won’t you, Hugh?” Billy insisted. “Because Lieutenant Denmead is down to Boston, won’t make any difference. We can undertake the work by ourselves without consulting anybody. And once we concluded to make the dust fly, you could partition the whole town off between the different patrols, and offer a prize to the one that showed the cleanest streets and yards two weeks later. How’s that for an idea, Hugh?”

“It sounds good to me, Billy, and to tell you the truth, I’m thinking more and more about going into the scheme, as we get to talking about it. I know my folks would be glad to see the place look halfway decent. If public sentiment can only be waked up, the thing is as good as done in spite of Lige and his gang.”

Billy was all animation now. The heat of the afternoon seemed to have passed entirely out of his mind. As was always the case when he went into any scheme, Billy was ready to throw himself heart and soul into the fray.

He was just about to say something further along the line of their interesting conversation, when a sudden wild racket arose, in which the yelping of a dog vied with loud laughter and hoots from around the corner.

Hugh and his fellow scout scrambled to their feet, wondering what was coming, possibly with half formed visions of a mad dog scare in their minds.

CHAPTER II.
A FRIEND IN NEED.

They were not long in discovering the cause of all that commotion. A yellow dog of no particular breed but of the kind generally denominated “cur,” came tearing around the corner of the street. He had an old rusty tin pan tied to his tail, and as this struck him at every jump, he was yelping like mad and trying every way possible to