tle to sanity. "Fine it minded me,
ma'am, o' the time when I was a boy, huntin' like a nickum for the nests
o' mavis an' merle--blackbird an' thrush--when I'd rise 'wi' lark an'
light!' Fegs!" Scotch humor ripping chauffeur silence, "yon was a thing
to make a sober body young again; a while agone I don't know but I was
feelin' like the last o' pea-time; an'--an', noo, I'm a green pea
again,... or I would be but for the one sair memory," added Andrew, the
true-penny, under his breath.

"Yes--yes, and you had to go jumping around like a parched pea, and
frightening the beautiful merle, the thrush, away!" complained Una,
aggrieved. "Oh! how did you ever learn to mimic its call, at all?" she
cried, catching at the wrist of the human merle, now very practically
engaged in toasting bacon-strips on the end of a stick.

"My brother taught me; my only brother, Stud--Studley--Studart they
nickname him in camp--I don't know why," was the fluttering response.

"A corruption of Stoutheart, I should say!" supplied the Guardian, now
busily frying flapjacks. "Of all the Boy Scouts in my husband's troop,
he's the lion-heart," laughingly. "So I understand!"

"Yes, oh! yes, but he's so-o nice, with it," cooed the merle's
brown-eyed "mate." "He has never--oh! never--squeezed me out of
anything, just because I was a girl; always said that two--two--could
hunt together and make good headway!" softly.

"And so they can: and so they will, when it comes to the grandest quest
of all, the hunt for truth and justice at the polls, voting side by
side! Girls! Dear--girls!" The eyes of Tanpa, the Guardian, were ablaze
now with more than the firelight's glow, as she tossed her browned cakes
on to a platter. "_Dear_ girls! In the new, the wider future before
us--soon to confront all of you--let us bring to it our Camp Fire
hall-mark: the hall-mark of the woods: purity of the Pinnacle's breath,
the 'pep' of the outdoor dawn--tenderness of the twilight, when we feel
that God is near!... And now--and now! let us sing our grace, not for
this food alone, but for the new manna which has fallen for us--the
glorious manna of opportunity."

"If we have earned the right to eat this bread, happy are we, but if
unmerited Thy blessings come, may we more faithful be!"

On wings of faith the moved chant floated forth, led by the girl-thrush
in a sweet soprano, supported by the sonorous roll of the Pinnacle
organ, the murmuring pine trees; and the voices of the