thing in the world for shingles but boys have got to do something and she is willing to take a chance; only to be as careful as we can, and not to eat any more apples than are necessary to our happiness and well being.

Anyhow, seven of us Bob's Hill boys sat there one Saturday afternoon in May, planning what to do in the long vacation. Every member of the Band was there, not counting Tom Chapin, except Skinny Miller; and we were expecting him every minute.

He was late then, and every little while one of us would stick his head around the edge of the barn to see if he wasn't coming up the driveway from Park Street. We might as well have sat still, for you never can tell which way he will come.

Pa says that Skinny is like the wind, which bloweth whither it listeth. I don't exactly know what he meant but that is what he said, or something like that.

It was quiet in the orchard. There was hardly a sound except the buzzing of insects in the sunshine, and somehow that only seemed to make it more quiet and dreamy.

Suddenly Bill Wilson stood up on the sloping shingles and gave such a warwhoop that it almost made the bark rattle on the trees. When Bill turns his voice loose it is something awful.

We looked up to see what it all was about. He had grabbed Benny Wade by the hair and, giving another yell louder than the first, was pretending to scalp him. Bill always likes to play Indian.

Benny didn't want to be scalped. Although he is two years younger and not nearly so big, he grabbed Bill around the legs and held on until they both slipped and went tumbling down the steep roof to the ground, where they sat, with the rest of us laughing down at them.

Just then we heard another warwhoop, sounding from up the hill somewhere, beyond the orchard. Bill and Benny scrambled to their feet, and we all looked and listened.

We saw nothing for a minute or two. Then something darted through the gate, which leads into the orchard from the hill; dropped down out of sight behind the fence, and commenced crawling backward toward the nearest apple tree. Every few seconds, it would raise up long enough to point something, which looked like a gun, at the enemy.

"Great snakes!" whispered Bill. "What's that?"

But we could tell in a minute without asking, for when it reached the tree it stood up and peered around the trunk, aiming a stick and pretending to fire. We knew then that Skinny was on the way.

"It's Skinny!" shouted Benny, throwing a stick at him.

Skinny waved one arm for us to be quiet, then began to wriggle back to the next tree. Making his way slowly from tree to tree, with a quick dash he finally reached the roof, where he felt safe.

"That was a close call, Skinny," said Bill. "I heard a bee buzzin' around out there in the orchard, a few minutes ago."

"Bee, nothin'!" Skinny told him, still pointing with his gun and looking around in every direction. "They pretty near had me surrounded."

That was the beginning of this history, which tells all about the doings of the Band, that set all the people talking about us for miles around.

Perhaps you never heard about the Band; how we found a cave at Peck's Falls, part way up the mountain, and had all kinds of fun playing there and on Bob's Hill. There are eight of us in all. Skinny is captain. His folks call him Gabriel but we don't like that name. Skinny is a good name for him, he is so fat. He can run though, even if he is heavy, and you would think that he could fight some if you had seen him once, when the Gingham Ground Gang got after us.

Benny Wade is the littlest fellow in the bunch but he feels just as big as anybody and sometimes that is almost as good as being big. Besides these there are Harry, Wallie, Chuck, Bill Wilson, Hank Bates,—Oh, yes, I most forgot,—and myself.

My name is John Alexander Smith. The boys call me Pedro, and I have been secretary ever since Tom Chapin found the cave. It's up to me to write the doings of the Band and the minutes of the meetings.

Tom Chapin was our first captain and he meets with us now, whenever he is in town.

The village where we live is in a long, narrow valley, with little Hoosac River flowing north through the center of it, until it gets beyond the mountain range. Then it turns west and hurries down into the Hudson.

Bob's Hill stands just west of the village and looks down upon the highest steeples. Over the brow of the hill and a little south are Plunkett's woods. West, straight back, a mile or more, begins the timbered slope of old Greylock, which, everybody knows, is the highest mountain in Massachusetts. And in the edge of the first woods, a little back from the road, is the prettiest place you ever sat eyes upon. Grown-up folks call it "the glen," but we boys just say "Peck's Falls." I don't know why, only there is a waterfall there, which begins in a brook, somewhere up on the mountainside, and plays and tumbles along, until finally it pours down from a high cliff into a pool a hundred feet below; then dashes off to join Hoosac River.

A queer-shaped rock, with a high back and narrow ledge, which we call the "pulpit," bridges the ravine in front of the falls, fifty feet and maybe more, above the rushing water. A little farther down the ravine, at the edge of the stream, is another rock. It will do no harm now to say that our cave is under that rock, because folks have found out about it, although not many know about there being two entrances.

All these things that I have told about belong to us boys. Mr. Plunkett thinks that he owns Plunkett's woods and Bob's Hill. I mean the very top of it. And somebody has been cutting trees off from Greylock, until it looks like a picked chicken in spots. But we call them all ours because we have more fun with them than anybody else does, and it seems to us that things belong to those who get the most out of them.

We knew from the way Skinny was acting that he had something on his mind, so we sat down and waited for him to tell us.

"Fellers," said he, after a while, "we've been Injuns and we've been bandits, and we have had fun, good and plenty. I ain't sayin' that Injuns and bandits are not all right sometimes but——"

"Guess what!" broke in Benny. "We've been 'splorers, too. Don't you remember 'sploring out in Illinois last summer? About LaSalle and that other guy and What's-her-name who fell over the cliff?"

"That was all right, too," said Skinny, "and I couldn't forget it in a thousand years, but I tell you those things are back numbers. They are out of date."

"Never mind about the date," said Hank, "but hurry and get it out of your system. We've got to be something, haven't we? If we ain't Injuns and we ain't bandits, what are we?"

"We are Scouts," shouted Skinny, aiming with his gun and dodging so quickly that he almost slid down the roof.

We all looked at one another in surprise, wondering what he meant. Benny spoke up first.

"What are those things, Skinny?" he asked.

"Why," said Skinny, "haven't you been readin' about 'em? They are—er—they are—er—they're just Scouts, that's all.—They scout around, you know, and do all kinds of stunts."

"Scoot around, you mean," I told him.

"Well, it's the same thing, ain't it?"

"Not for mine," said Bill, shaking his head. "Scouts may be all right, but Injuns and bandits are good enough for me."

"Here's the book, anyhow," said Skinny.

He pulled out of his pocket a little book, which told all about "The Boy Scouts of America."

"That's what we are going to be,