me it's funny how _my_ things always go. Hope, now, I
don't lose that splendid little aluminum compass I bought the other day,
thinking that it might save me from getting lost in the woods some
time."

"Oh! come along, old slow-poke, we're going to start There's Bumpus
trying to screw his lips into a pucker right now, so he can blow the
bugle. Ain't he got the grit, though, to attend to his business with
that swollen face?"

Presently, after the inspiring notes of the bugle had sounded, the
patrol once more took up its line of march. Each scout had his staff in
his hand, and carried a haversack on his back. Blankets they had none,
for all those necessary things had been entrusted to the care of a
farmer, whose route home from early market took him near the intended
camping place on Lake Omega; a beautiful, if wild looking sheet of water
some miles in length, and situated about ten from Cranford town.

Allan and Thad headed the procession that soon straggled in couples
along the side of the dusty road.

"What made you mention the name of Brose Griffin when you detailed
Number Four to remain at the camp?" asked Allan, who had evidently been
thinking about this same thing.

"Well," replied the scout-master, "it flashed into my mind that these
tough fellows might have dogged us up here, to play some of their tricks
on us when in camp; and that holding Bumpus was meant to draw the rest
off, so they could run away with our haversacks, which they knew must
contain lots of things we couldn't well get on without in camp."

"Smithy couldn't if his hair brush and his little whisk broom were
missing," declared Allan, with a chuckle. "Why, that boy seems to only
live to fight against dirt. He's the most particular fellow I ever
knew."

"Oh! wait and see how he gets over that before he's been a scout two
months," said Thad, also laughing. "Nothing like the rough and ready
life in camp and on the march to cure a boy of being over-clean. He'd
never learn any different at home, you know, because his mother is the
same way, and brought him up pretty much like a girl. But he's reached
the point now where the true boy nature is beginning to get the better
of that false pride."

"But seriously, Thad, do you believe we'll see anything of Brose Griffin
and his two shadows, Bangs and Hop?"

"I certainly hope we won't," replied the other; "but you know what they
are; and I've been told that they went around asking all sorts of
quest