man, much less a bunch of Scouts who are just as
good in their State as we're supposed to be in our own, just what's
happened. So you stay here, and I'll take Canfield along with me in the
car and make my way back to headquarters. You'll be able to leave pretty
soon, anyhow, because it will be too dark for effective long-range
signalling less than an hour from now. You can do it all right, can't
you?"

"Yes," said Tom Binns, pluckily. It was plain that he didn't like the
prospect of staying there alone, but he could see the necessity as
easily as Jack himself, and that there was no other way of meeting the
circumstance that had arisen.

"Do your best, of course, to avoid being captured," said Jack, as he
turned to go, with Canfield at his side. "But it will be no reflection
on you if you are made a prisoner, and we won't need to feel that
they've put one over on us if they catch you. We've got more than a fair
return for the loss of even a First Class Scout in the information that
they've unknowingly given us. It may mean the difference between the
success and failure of the whole campaign."

"You're a wonder, Danby," said Canfield, as they made their way down to
the car. Being on parole, of course, and, as a Boy Scout should always
be, honorable and incapable of breaking his given word, Canfield made no
attempt to escape or hamper Jack in any way. "I've heard a lot about
you, and I'm glad to see you at work, even if it does make it bad for
me. You seem to be able to tell just about what's going on around here.
I couldn't do that. I didn't think about the larger meaning of the
orders I was passing on."

"I may be wrong, you know," said Jack, as he waited for Canfield to step
into the car before climbing into the driver's seat. "I'm really only
making a guess, but I think it's a pretty good one. And, anyhow, with
the notes I've got for him, General Harkness ought to be able to get a
pretty good line on what's doing."

"He ought to be," admitted Canfield, regretfully, but smiling at the
same time. "You're certainly one jim-dandy as a Scout! I'd hate to be
against you in a real war. If you can handle things always the way
you've done this time, you'd be a pretty hard proposition in a real
honest-to-goodness fight."

CHAPTER VII

A TIMELY WARNING

Jack debated the advisability of meeting General Bean and telling him
what he had learned, but he decided that since that detour would take up
nearly half an h