Mr. Gilroy sighed and said, "Now I shall take a
long rest and recover from the past few days' work!"

A few days after their return from the "voyage," as they called it, the
scout girls received a bundle of mail. In it were newspapers, many
letters, and other interesting items. The papers were all "marked
copies," and the mail proved to be letters filled with congratulations
and words of praise for the brave girls.

"Why, they must be crazy! Every one's writing about what we did at the
fire!" laughed Julie.

"Yes, just listen to this from 'Liza, every one!" called out Betty. And
she read: "'So I sez to yer Pa, yu've got two fine scouts in them girls,
Mister Lee, and this proves it. Any girl what will climb the side of a
house to save folkses from burning, is wuth a lot of lazy,
good-fer-nothin' boys, I sez.'"

Every one laughed heartily at the praise thus bestowed upon them; but
Betty said regretfully, "It's too bad I didn't do as much as Julie did
at that fire. Daddy won't feel very proud of me, I'm afraid!"

"Oh, but you did, Betty! You ran for the Captain and did all sorts of
stunts we couldn't have done. But not every one could climb like Jo and
I do!" said Julie, soothingly.

"Oh, girls!" exclaimed the Captain, who had been hurriedly glancing over
one of the papers received. "Listen to this from a New York paper. Oh, I
am so proud of you all!" Then she read:

"'At a recent fire that destroyed Dickens' Hotel at Raquette Lake,
Adirondacks, a group of girl scouts known as the Dandelion Troop saved
many lives and did heroic work in saving property. One of the hotel
guests told our local reporter the story and we print his own words.'"

Then followed an account of the fire, and how it started because of a
defective flue in the kitchen chimney. It told in detail all that the
girls did, but the story merely mentioned Alec and _his_ courageous act.
At the last of the story, a full description was given of how the balsam
beds were made, and how the boarders were now enjoying themselves in
tent-life and out-of-door camp cooking. And all this was due, it said,
to the Girl Scouts being able to teach the homeless boarders how to
help themselves with the bountiful supply from Nature.

That morning, Mr. Gilroy came down to the camp to hear the news, for he
also had received several papers with the story of the fire in them.
After the excitement of reading it all over again to him, the girls
quieted down to hear what he