n a trifle sad; but they cheered
themselves up with promises of other like journeys in the future, and
took the road for a seventeen-mile march.

'Do we pull our knots out for lending a hand to the keeper last night,
Chippy?' asked Dick, laughing.

'You can pull your'n out two or three times over,' replied the Raven.
'Fust ye saved me; then ye let that big rogue ha' one for luck, an'
that saved the keeper. Me, I did naught, 'cept get collared when I
wor' fast asleep.'

'Didn't you?' returned Dick. 'I know that shout of yours was the thing
that frightened him, not the crack I hit him. He thought a six-foot
policeman was at his heels. Well, never mind the knots. We'll throw
that in. After all, boy scouts are bound to lend a hand in the cause
of law and order.'

'O' course,' agreed Chippy. 'Wheer's discipline if so be as everybody
can do as he's a mind?'

CHAPTER XLIII

THE BROKEN BICYCLE

That morning the brother scouts enjoyed an experience which gave them
keener pleasure than perhaps anything else which happened during their
journey. It began about eleven o'clock, when they were following a
country road upon which hamlets, and even houses, were very far apart.

They were approaching the foot of a very steep hill, when the Raven's
eyes, always on the watch, as a scout's eyes should be, caught a gleam
of something glittering in a great bed of weeds beside the road. He
stopped, parted the weeds with his staff, and disclosed a broken
bicycle, diamond-framed, lying on its side. It was the bright
nickelled handle-bar which had caught his eye.

'Somebody's had a smash, and left the broken machine here,' said Dick;
and Chippy nodded.

Now, Dick's statement of the case would have satisfied most people, and
they would have gone on their way. There was the broken bicycle, and
the rider had left it. Perhaps he meant to fetch his disabled machine
later. In any case an untrained person would have seen nothing that he
could possibly do, and would have dismissed the matter from his mind.
But that would not do for the Wolf and the Raven. It was their duty as
scouts to got to the bottom of the affair, if possible, on the chance
that help was needed somehow or somewhere, and they began a careful
examination of the machine and its surroundings.

The cause of the accident suggested itself at once--a broken brake and
a runaway down the hill, with a smash at the foot. There were two
brakes on the machine.