Scouts
tried to find out. Durland had not even thought it necessary to warn
Jack to be quiet, for he knew that Jack was on his honor as a Scout, and
that nothing more was necessary to lead him to maintain a resolute
silence on the subject of the strange scouting trip into the enemy's
country which he was soon to begin.

"Good luck," cried the Scout-Master, finally, as Jack started off. "You
know your orders--now make good!"

CHAPTER IV

IN THE ENEMY'S COUNTRY

Almost at the last moment Scout-Master Durland, or Captain Durland, as
he was again for this week, had decided not to send Jack Danby on his
trip into the enemy's country alone. Seated beside Jack, therefore,
under the protective hood of the scout car, was little Tom Binns.

"Keep your eye on your watch, Tom," said Jack. "We don't want to make
any mistake and cross the line too soon--but we don't want to be late,
either. This job is too important to run any risks of bungling it. I'd
hate to think that I'd been trusted with something really big for the
first time and then fallen down on it."

"Where will you cross the line, Jack?" asked Tom. "I should think it
would be pretty hard to tell just where the boundary was."

Jack pointed to a road map, on a slightly smaller scale than the one
from which Captain Durland had given him his course, which was pasted
right before his eyes on the metal dashboard of the car.

"I can't lose my way with that, Tom," he said. "See, there's a road that
we're getting pretty near to now. It crosses the State line about six
miles east of Bremerton, if you'll notice the map, at a little village
called Mardean. That's all on this side of the line. They may be
watching the road there, so what we want to do is to get where we can't
be seen, and then, about a minute before noon, go ahead as fast as the
car will carry us. That ought to take us through all right, even if
they've got a guard on duty. Then we can circle around in a big sweep
and come down to Hardport from behind. The country people ought to be
able to tell us part of what we want to know, and we can confirm what
they tell us by what we can see ourselves."

"They wouldn't lie to us, would they, Jack?"

"You couldn't call it regular lying if they gave us false information
about their own army, Tom. Remember that this is supposed to be like a
real war, and in a war the invading army wouldn't expect to get correct
information from the people along the roads. On t