They had come out expecting a restful, pleasant vacation, with the
thrill of a war game as an additional incentive for them to turn out,
but they were finding that it closely resembled hard work--the sort of
work they got too little of in their crowded days of office routine.
Later they would enjoy the recollection of it, but while they were doing
it there was a good deal of roughing that wasn't so pleasant.

A late moon made the countryside brilliant, and easy to cover with the
eye, and when, a couple of hours after midnight, the roll of rifle
firing in the distance, coming like light thunder, awoke the Scouts, who
were sleeping three in a room, many of them rushed to their windows.

Jack Danby shared a room with Pete Stubbs and Tom Binns, his particular
chums, and he laughed at them.

"What are you looking for, powder smoke?" he asked them. "Don't you
remember that they're using smokeless powder in this war? You couldn't
see that firing if it were within a hundred yards."

The firing soon became general and Jack himself grew interested.

"That doesn't sound just like outposts coming together," he said. "It
seems to me that it's pretty general firing, as if considerable bodies
of men were getting engaged. I'd like to be out there and see what's
going on."

The distant din increased, and there was no longer a chance for the
Scouts to sleep. In real warfare tired men, it is said, can sleep with a
battle raging all about them, but the Scouts weren't inured to such
heavy firing yet, and it disturbed and excited them. Durland himself
wasn't bothered, but he sensed the restlessness of his Troop, and he
rose and dressed. One by one, too, the Scouts followed his example, and
gathered on the big veranda of the village inn.

"Come on over to the telegraph office, Dick," said Durland. "Let's see
if we can't find out who's kicking up all this fuss and what it's
about."

The telegraph wires, which never slept, were clicking busily when the
Scout-Master and his assistant entered the office.

"Abbey's cavalry running into the enemy on the Newville pike," said a
tired operator, flicking a cigarette from his mouth as Durland spoke to
him. "Funny, too! We thought he'd join General Bean before he saw a sign
of the enemy."

Durland felt himself growing anxious; then laughed at himself for his
own anxiety. He turned to find Dick Crawford at his elbow.

"I'm taking this thing too seriously, Dick," he said, with a smile.
"After