n plot to dynamite a great
dam and destroy a munition city; and later the wireless patrol had run
down the dynamiters themselves in the very nick of time, after the
state police had failed to find them, and had saved the city.

With Henry, to think was to act. "I'll write Captain Hardy at once,"
he said to himself.

Captain Hardy was a young physician who had been leader of the club of
boys that had camped on his father's farm near old Fort Brady, and that
had subsequently become the Camp Brady Wireless Club. But Captain
Hardy was no longer leader of the club. He had offered his services to
his country, and was now Captain Hardy of the Medical Officers' Reserve
Corps. It was his standing and his friendship with the Chief of the
Radio Service that had made it possible to secure permission for the
Camp Brady boys to act as radio men for the state troops the preceding
summer, although the government had forbidden amateurs to send wireless
messages. And Henry, believing that his idolized leader could
accomplish anything, now cleared a space at his desk in a corner of the
shop, and wrote him a long letter, setting forth all that was in his
heart.

The promptness with which the answer came should have warned Henry that
the reply was not the one he hoped for. But his faith in his leader
was so great that he never doubted for a moment that if Captain Hardy
favored the proposal, he could effect its accomplishment. With a shout
of joy, Henry seized the letter from the hand of the postman and ran to
his favorite haunt, the workshop, to read it. As he did so, the smile
faded from his face and a look of utter despair succeeded it, for this
was what he read:

"MY DEAR HENRY:

"It was a very great pleasure to receive your letter, with the little
items of information about the members of the club, and your plan to be
helpful in the present emergency. I know exactly how you feel. Every
true American is filled with similar loathing for the treacherous
enemies that infest our land, and with the same ardent desire to hunt
them down and bring them to justice. You may be very sure that our
secret service men are hard on the trail of many of them. Yet the very
story of treachery that has so stirred your indignation shows that the
secret service men cannot cope with them. But the fault is not with
the secret service. It lies with Congress, which has persistently
refused to appropriate sufficient money to make the service