t; since they avoid
stiffness, such as ruins so many otherwise interesting pictures.

Here, with the woods for a background, Paul, acting by agreement as
temporary scout master, drilled his followers in scout law, sign, salute,
and the significance of the badges which they wore, all of them, of
course, of the tenderfoot type, since few had as yet started to qualify
for any higher plane.

Signal flags had been brought along; and a class in semaphore work proved
that some of the members of the troop were making rapid progress along
that line. They had mastered the Morse code, too; and had the occasion
arisen might have sent messages over the wire, although probably none
save Paul could have received the same, unless the words came painfully
slow.

The afternoon passed almost before they realized it; and more than a few
declared that the sun must have dropped like a plummet, when they found
twilight creeping upon the forest.

Both Ted and Ward had long since gone away, as though disgusted. They had
tried to sneer at the work of Stanhope Troop No. 1; but every one knew
this humor was assumed; and that secretly they were eating their very
hearts out for envy.

No doubt there would be a hot time among their followers, when the
leaders endeavored to drive them to beat the record Wallace Carberry
had set in his fire starting, and water-boiling test.

"Suppose you come to supper with me, Paul," suggested Jack, when they
were more than half way back to town, with the double column moving along
like clockwork, every right leg thrust out in unison, as though forming a
part of a well-regulated machine.

Paul looked quickly at him when Jack said this.

"Oh! I can see through a millstone, when it has a hole in it," he
remarked.

"Which is one way of saying that you can guess I have a motive in asking
you?" returned the other, smiling queerly; "well, I have, in fact,
several. In the first place my mother told me to ask you. I rather think
she wants to pump you about that affair last night. Father wouldn't tell
her all she wished to know. Then again I'm still all broken up about
those lost coins; and I thought perhaps you might have guessed the answer
to the riddle."

"What's that? More of them gone, Jack?" asked Paul, lowering his voice,
so that the two scouts at the tail end of the line might not hear.

"Don't know yet. Didn't have the nerve to go up into my den since this
morning. To tell the truth that place has lost a