when murmurs of applause had died away. “Shall I put you back to bed now?”

“No, thank you; I——”

Laughter greeted Hugh’s query, for Billy Worth bore an undeserved reputation of being a sluggard. On his part, he took the laugh good-humoredly.

“Is that what you call doing a daily good turn?” he inquired of Hardin, with a grin. “You’ve begun the day nicely, I must say!”

“You did the good turn, old scout!” called Walter Osborne, of the Hawk patrol, from across the room. “I never saw a neater tumble!”

“I’ll take a fall out of you for that, Walt!” threatened Billy, cheerfully. “If we have archery practice to-day, you’ll miss a feather from your wing!”

“Hear! Hear!” came a chorus of voices.

“Fly at him, Walt!” urged one of young Osborne’s patrol.

“Go to it, beak and claws,” added another.

“Billy the Wolf’ll catch you if you don’t watch out!” chanted a third, in a sing-song voice, thumping his pillow as if to beat time to the words.

Neither Billy nor Hugh made any response to this friendly taunt. Hugh turned aside and, going to the rear of the room where a tier of lockers stood, numbered to correspond with the bunks, he drew out a pair of bathing trunks.

“Going for a swim before breakfast?” asked Billy, turning to a young fellow who appeared in the doorway of the cabin and paused on the threshold outside.

“Are you?” came the evasive answer.

“You bet! The Lieutenant gave us permission yesterday, and we’re off to the lake, bright and early.”

“I see,” remarked the outsider, glancing around the cabin, which was filled with boys in various stages of undress.

Something in the tone of his voice, a note of wistful bitterness, struck the ears of Hugh Hardin, who was standing near enough to overhear this brief colloquy. He looked up from the process of tying the strings of his shorts tight, and was on the point of making some remark, when, recognizing the visitor, he kept silence.

Billy Worth was not so tactful.

“Come along, Alec,” he urged. “The water’s fine!”

“Can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’m on police duty, as punishment.”

“Punishment? For what?”

“Carelessness,” was Alec’s truthful, albeit sulky, reply. “Yesterday I dumped ‘Buck’ Winter out of a canoe,—though it wasn’t all my fault. The kid wouldn’t keep still, and he told me he could swim like a fish,—and he was nearly drowned.”

“Gee! That little piker! Why, he can swim! Didn’t he capture two points from us last week, in the hundred yards?”

“Wrong again, Billy! It was his brother, who is the star swimmer of our patrol.”

“Well, your Otters put it all over us, Alec, in those water games.”

“That is why we are so glad to have morning practice,” added Hugh, in a tone which he honestly intended to be kind. “We Wolves want time to find out what we can do.”

“Buck must have lost his head,” remarked Walter Osborne, who had drawn near.

“He did,” said Alec, emphatically, “and he gave Chief Hardin a chance to qualify in first-aid—at my expense.”

There was no mistaking the resentment that underlay those words. Walt and Billy glanced uneasily at Hugh.

A flush stained Hugh’s bronzed cheeks and brow at the retort, and he turned away scornfully, biting his under lip. It was hard to keep his temper in control, as a scout should; but he managed to do so, and the next moment he was outside the cabin, filling his lungs with deep draughts of the pine-scented air and watching the mists roll up the side of the opposite mountain. With the coming of the sun, he was able to take fresh note of his surroundings, and his eager dark eyes dwelt fondly upon the familiar scene in the first light of a new day.

Indeed, it was a scene to stir any red-blooded boy. As far as Hugh could see through the lifting vapor lay the lake, a great silvery mirror reflecting the heavily wooded shores so clearly that the inverted forest appeared no less real than the original. From the shores of the lake, in every direction, hills sloped ruggedly up into mountains, for the most part clothed to their summits with the variegated green of a mighty woodland. The side of one of the nearer mountains was scarred by exposed ledges of bare rock, which, as Lieutenant Denmead, the Scout Master, had said, would make fine strategic points for the Signalers’ Game.

“We’ll try it some day this week,” he had told Hugh on the previous evening, as he sat with his assistant scout master, Rawson, and the leaders of the four patrols around the camp-fire.

Hugh recalled that vague promise now, as his gaze wandered from those rocky ledges to the deeper hollows not yet penetrated by the sun’s rays.

How dim and mysterious they looked! How Hugh longed to explore them and to discover, by means of such woodcraft as he had already learned, the treasures hidden in those shadowy nooks and ravines!

Several boys of his patrol followed him from the cabin. They saw that something had vexed him, but they made no comments, even among themselves. Presently they dashed away, down to the shore of the lake, where most of the boys from the other cabins were gathered. These boys belonged to the Otter and the Fox patrols.

Left alone for the moment, Hugh waited for Billy and Walter, to whom he had decided to make an explanation of Alec’s thrust. As they walked down to the lake together,—Alec having departed on his rounds to the chip-basket,—he told them how he had happened to be on hand to give assistance at the canoe accident.

“I didn’t help very much, really,” he finished, “and I don’t see why Alec should be so sore.”

“Oh, never mind him, Hugh; he’ll get over his grouch after a while,” declared Billy. “He is jealous of you because you qualified as a first-class scout before he did, and because you are in line for a merit badge as chief scout woodsman.”

“Hello, son!” exclaimed Walter, turning to greet an eager-faced boy, Number 8 of his patrol, who had trotted up behind them. “What’s eating you now?”

“Do-do you know why the Big Chief has called a m-m-meeting of the patrols this morning?” panted the boy.

“No, I don’t,” admitted Walter. “But we will find out after breakfast. Run along now, son, and mind: not more than ten minutes in the water!”

“All right, I’ll remember,” promised the younger boy, and he raced ahead several yards. Suddenly he stopped short, turned around, and waited for the trio to come up. “I-I say, Hugh, will you—will you do me a favor?” he inquired hesitatingly. “Will you coach me on the crawl?”

“Surest thing you know! That’s what I’m here for,” Hugh responded heartily.

A few more strides brought them to the shore of the lake, where they stood for a moment, watching a group of boys swimming out to the raft. Then, with a quick “Come on, now! Watch me!” Hugh leaped forward into the water, followed by Walter and Billy. The boy whom he was coaching stood knee-deep in the water, gazing with admiration not unmixed with envy at the powerful yet easy overhand strokes that sent the swimmer through the ripples without apparent exertion, yet at a speed that made his own best efforts seem hopeless. In another moment he, too, was breasting the lake, and soon he gained the raft and climbed upon it.

“That’s much