l leader thus addressed did not reply, though he
recognized the challenge with a wave of his hand.

He was busy bringing his patrol in matching line with the other
patrols. As if realizing their purpose, the circle around the camp
fire was broken at a point nearest the newly arrived invaders, and an
avenue of approach was formed by the lining up of some of the girls in
two rows extended out towards the Boy Scouts. In double file a hundred
and fifty boys marched in and around the campfire; then faced toward
the outer ring of Camp Fire Girls and bowed acknowledgment of the
courteous reception.

* * * * *

CHAPTER II.

THE BOY SCOUTS' INVASION.

That was a grand surprise that the Boy Scouts of Spring Lake academy
"put over" on the Camp Fire Girls of Hiawatha Institute. They had been
planning it for several weeks, or since they first received
information of the Grand Council Fire as a closing event of the first
semester of the girls' school. The two institutions were located in
municipalities only fifteen miles apart, connected by both steam
railroad and electric interurban lines.

Spring Lake academy, located on a lake of the same name at the
southern outskirt of Kingston, was originally a boys' military school,
and it still retained that primal distinction. But the success of
Hiawatha Institute as a Camp Fire Girls' school set the imaginative
minds of some of the leaders of the boys at Spring Lake to work along
similar lines, with the result that the faculty's cooperation was
petitioned for the organization of the student body into a troop of
Boy Scout patrols. The scheme was successful, and as it served to
inject new life into the academy, the business end of the institution
had no ground for complaint.

This innovation at Spring Lake was due largely to the activities of
Clifford Long, one of the students. He was a cousin of Marion
Stanlock, and naturally this relationship served to direct his
personal interest toward Hiawatha Institute. Not a few other students
in these two schools were similarly related, some of them being
brothers and sisters.

And so it is not to be wondered at if these two places of learning
became, as it were, twin schools, with much of interest in common and
many of their activities interassociated. They had rival debating
teams between which were held more or less periodic contests, and in
the numerous social events there were frequently exchanges