his fingers between
his lips and blowing through the crevices. In less than ten seconds
afterwards, two shots sounded in quick succession.

"That means they've heard us and are waiting," cried Dick. "Come this
way,--that echo is misleading."

So the girls followed their young guide, and soon they broke through the
fringe of great trees into the clearing where the rest of the party
stood. Alec gave them no time to explain. He was angry, and no mistaking
it!

"Dick, can you tell me of any concession made to you that allows you to
start two fires and then go away and leave them to work their will in
these forests? If we had not found the fires you left, what might have
resulted to this area of mountain land?"

The girls and Dick stood amazed, for they had forgotten all about the
fires started as smoke signals.

"When I broke through the underbrush into this clearing, the fires were
blazing away like fury. They had encroached upon all the brush and handy
leaves, and were eating a way to the timber-line. In half an hour more
those same _little_ fires would be raging over the crest and destroying
acres and acres of forest-trees, to say nothing of causing the work all
the farmers and forest-rangers would have in trying to control it. Just
because a brainless scout _forgot_ his duty!" The scorn in Alec's last
words was cutting.

Dick began to apologize, but Alec held up a hand. "No apology will
answer for such a thing." Then he turned to Ned and said: "Put Dick down
for penance at camp."

"We ought to be punished as well as Dick," said Julie. "We never
remembered the fires, either."

"That's up to your Captain,--I am merely doing my duty to _my_ Troop,"
returned Alec.

"Had anything to eat?" asked Anne, who always felt sorry for any one who
was hungry.

"We ate the mushrooms we found," meekly replied Joan.

"Then come back and eat what we left for you. We had fish and greens and
biscuit," said Hester.

While they were munching the cold food, Alec questioned them further.
"Why didn't you use what scout-sense you had? You know you could have
found the way you came through those woods by looking for broken cobwebs
across the bushes; by overturned stones with the damp under side
showing; or by broken twigs and crushed blades of grass; and last, but
hardest, you might have looked to see where leaves on trees and bushes
were turned awry from your brushing against them. They do not right
themselves immediately, you k