ation of the garrulous old newsdealer, but it
wasn't easy when he knew that each minute wasted now was going to make
it harder to get through in time for the scout meeting. When he was
released at last, he hurried all he could, but the minute-hand of the
old town-clock was perilously close to the perpendicular when he got
back to the square again.

Clearly, there was no time to go home even for that "hurry up" snack he
had been thinking about. There wasn't even time to get a sandwich from
the lunch-wagon, two blocks away. "Have to pull in my belt and forget
about it till I get home after meeting, I reckon," he thought.

In suiting the action to the word he realized that his hurried efforts
at the news-stand to clean off the mud had been far from successful. It
plastered his person, if not from head to foot, at least from the waist
down, and now that it was beginning to dry, it seemed to show up more
distinctly each moment. He couldn't present himself before Scoutmaster
Curtis in such a plight, so he raced across the square to his friend
Joe Banta's shoe-cleaning establishment, borrowed a stiff brush, and
went to work vigorously.

Brief as was the delay, it sufficed to make him late. Though not at
all sectarian, Troop Five held its weekly meetings in the parish-house
of the Episcopal church, whose rector was intensely interested in the
movement. These were scheduled for seven-thirty on Monday evenings.
There was usually a brief delay for belated scouts, but by twenty minutes
of eight, at latest, the shrill blast of the scoutmaster's whistle
brought the fellows at attention, ready for the salute to the flag and
the other simple exercises that opened the meeting.

Precisely one minute later Dale Tompkins burst hastily into the vestibule
and pulled up abruptly. Through the open door a long line of khaki-clad
backs confronted him, trim, erect, efficient-looking. Each figure stood
rigidly at attention, shoulders back, eyes set straight ahead, three
fingers pressed against the forehead in the scout salute, and lips
moving in unison over the last words of the scout oath.

"... To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally
straight."

"Colors post!" came crisply from the scoutmaster facing the line.

From the shadows of the entry Dale felt a sort of thrill at the precision
of the movement and the neatness with which the slim color-bearer, who
had faced the line just in front of Mr. Curtis and his assistant