that he would have excellent results to show for all their work.

“You’ve got to print a copy for each one of us, too,” remarked Billy seriously. “I’m going to have an enlargement made, which I can frame and hang over the desk in my den at home. Every time I look up at it I’ll remember what it means, and feel thankful that I joined the scouts and that Hugh was along with us! It gives me a cold shiver to think what might have happened if the other three of us had been by ourselves. Neither Bud nor myself would have known enough to put up any objection when you made your bid for shelter, Arthur.”

“Oh! forget that, can’t you?” pleaded Bud. “Let’s move on, fellows, and find something more cheerful to look at than heaps of kindling wood, great splinters, and broken branches every-which-way.”

“Do we start for the bully rocks now, Hugh?” asked Billy, when the artist had gathered his traps together and seemed ready to continue the tramp.

“That’s the next thing on the program; and after we’ve taken what views we want there, why, I’ll show you what I want to try out. It struck me yesterday as we were looking for new nut trees up here, and I saw how fine the cliffs stood up in several places.”

“P’r’aps, Hugh,” chuckled Billy, “you might be aiming to give the Excelsior fire-fighters a few object lessons on how to save people from ten-story tenement buildings; but as we haven’t anything taller than three stories in our town, I don’t see just how they’ll profit by it.”

“Of course I wasn’t thinking of the fire company when I laid out these plans,” the patrol leader said; “but this rope-climbing business is like a good many other things scouts learn: they don’t ever expect to have to depend on such a thing to save either their own life, or that of another person; but if the time ever does come, it’s handy to know how.”

“You’re right there, Hugh,” admitted Billy; “it’s just like a man insuring his house against fire. I don’t reckon anybody ever believes his house is going to burn down; but he only wants to have his mind easy.”

“Well, lots of the stunts scouts learn are just so much insurance, as you might say,” Hugh declared. “And the more a boy stocks up with this stuff, the better he’s equipped for life. That’s where it counts big, I’m telling you.”

“And there is where we tucked ourselves away from the cloud-burst!” announced Billy, being the first to glimpse the queer rocky formations in the shape of shelves, that jutted out for six feet or so from the face of the hill.

Again Arthur “got busy” and made his arrangements. Hugh seldom offered any suggestion, for he saw that the other was better qualified to manage this thing than any of the rest. Once more they posed while the proper focus was being secured; and then Arthur injected himself into the group, gave the customary warning, and finally pressed the magic bulb that completed the circuit.

Since so much depended on getting a sure-shot of the queer shelter which Hugh had discovered, Arthur repeated the attempt once more; in case one exposure should have some mishap come to it, he could turn to the other. He had learned that in all important cases, where extra value is placed on a picture, it is a good thing to make doubly sure; because it is often utterly impossible to secure the same conditions twice, and a valuable opportunity may be lost.

After this, Hugh assumed charge of things. He was really anxious to try out several ideas of his own connected with cliff climbing, which had been one of the features of past contests in which the scouts had indulged to a limited degree. Now he believed he had hit on a series of experiments that would not only prove fascinating sport, but give them all considerable training in rope-climbing, as well as a knowledge of how Alpine guides manage to keep from falling when mounting dizzy heights.

Twenty minutes after taking the last picture, the four scouts were climbing the rugged mountainside. Far above them they could see the bare ridges of a higher peak, where many of their earlier outings had been conducted in the days when the troop was still young.

They were chattering like a flock of magpies, when Billy suddenly gave a cry of excitement. As before, those quick eyes of his had been roving to the right, to the left and straight ahead, always discovering new things.

“Oh! what in Sam Hill is that thing over yonder coming straight this way?” he yelled, clutching Hugh by the arm. “If I’d been reading ‘Baron Munchausen’ or ‘Sinbad the Sailor,’ I’d think it was a giant roc flying toward us; but it seems more like a battered old balloon dropping down to the ground.”

“It is a balloon,” said Hugh, after looking intently; “and I believe I can see a man in the swinging basket, waving his arms to us, as though he might have lost all control and wanted us to help save him!”

The other scouts were of the same mind when they had looked closer. It gave them a thrill to realize that all of a sudden, out of the clear sky, an opportunity had arisen whereby they might be of use to one in great peril.

CHAPTER V.
THE WRECKED BALLOON.

“It’s sinking right along, isn’t it, Hugh?” exclaimed Bud in an awed tone, as he kept his eyes fastened on the strange object that had so unexpectedly dawned upon their vision.

As it happened that the trees grew sparsely in that quarter, they were able to watch the approach of the sky traveler in his disabled balloon. All of the boys took it for granted that he must have ascended at some fair ground, and met with an accident that had prevented a return to earth under normal conditions.

“There’s no question about that,” the patrol leader replied to Bud’s question; “and now it is easy to see that there is a man in that wobbling basket.”

“Yes, and as you said, he’s making motions to us to do something,” added Arthur, as he hurriedly opened his camera and prepared to take a snapshot of the balloon.

“What can we do to help him, Hugh?” Billy demanded, apparently ready to dash forward at headlong speed if only the order came from the patrol leader.

“Nothing just now, the way things stand,” came the reply. “He is coming as straight toward us as if we had a line and were pulling him. Wait till the balloon gets here, and if there happens to be a trailing rope, we’ll grab hold of that, and wind it around a stump or a rock to anchor the old runaway.”

“That sounds sensible, Hugh,” admitted Billy, always ready to agree with the leader.

“Look at the thing swing up and down, will you?” cried Bud. “Boys, it will be a lucky thing for the professor if he gets out of that scrape with his life. As for me, you’d have to ring the bell lots of times before I’d go up a mile high in one of those flimsy silk bags. Wow! did you see how close it came to that tall tree right then? That would have done the business, I reckon. And there are lots more of the same kind ahead of him yet.”

“Do you see a trailing rope, boys?” asked Hugh. “Sometimes they let one down and have a weight on it for a drag anchor. Seems to me I can glimpse something of the kind now and then.”

“You’re right, Hugh, it’s there!” ejaculated Arthur, who had already snapped off one view of the advancing balloon.

“Everybody get ready to lay hold and fight like everything to check the runaway,”