his chances in it.

"Ha!

"No Loyal Scout gives place to doubt,
But action quick he shows!"

The song, his own, the original march-song of his troop, sang itself
through Stud's brain, seethed in the low whistle upon his lips, as,
guided by his ruby breast-eye, he slid down into that strange and secret
dungeon in which the black passage ended and, thrusting his sturdy
shoulders under the pendent body of the victim whose convulsed hands
clutched vainly at the bare slab, raised it so that the choking boy
could breathe freely again--and in due time shake off the dizziness of
his awful plight, hung up by the heels by the rock itself.

But not until the Scoutmaster came to his patrol leader's assistance
could those pinioned feet be really freed and their owner brought to
daylight again, not by a return via the fissure route, but hoisted in a
rope-noose, as Pem had been from the Devil's Chair, through a
grass-covered opening discoverable in the roof of that inner cave.

"Goodness! after all, he wasn't so much more foolish--headstrong--than I
was. But Una! Una! If you ever-r tell them!" Thus did the maiden of the
chowchow name spill her spice into her friend's ear,--burning spice,
for, privately, she was shocked at seeing her own folly, parodied,
vulgarized, as it were.

"Well! I should say! He was hanging between hawk and buzzard--if ever a
fellow was," happened to be Stud's moved comment as, clinging to that
lowered rope, he was hoisted, too, through that covert opening, the
loyal little lamp upon his breast paling now into a penny candle held
towards the sun.

But the rescuer's halo did not pale.

It burnished the picnic luncheon which followed, encircling,
rainbow-like, little Jessie who basked in it more than did the
rebellious hero, pelted with wild flowers by the girls--as symbolic of
other bouquets.

"Oh! let up--let up--will you? Those big fellows will take me for the
'goat'--somebody's 'goat'!" protested Stud helplessly, striving to
direct attention from himself by training it upon a straggling group of
distant youths, really too far off to take stock of what was going on
among the merry picnic party.

But Pemrose was taking stock of them. Her widening eyes, her reddening
cheeks, the little piqued shiver that electrified her chin, told that
one figure--one figure--called for recognition; called for it, indeed,
so loudly that it couldn't be denied him.

Every member of that group--a canoeing part