ver more should he play Jack at a Pinch to her! Never!

Through old Tory Cave there surged the noise of a rising wind, silencing
that weak gust afar off, now baleful, the sound of the hidden water;
reverberating among the rocks, it might be taken for anything, for the
hum of aircraft--for a perfect onslaught of sky cavalry!

And the Scoutmaster's cry was convincing.

Yet--yet, when boys and girls tumbled tumultuously through the cave
entrance--the girls by some mysterious understanding, first--not a
remote sign of a biplane, even a meager _one_, decorated the sky
overhead.

No flying wires sent down their challenge. And the hum resolved itself
into what it was: the rising, random mockery of Ta-te, the tempest,
laughing at their searching looks, going north, south, east and west,
aloft, skirmishing in bewilderment to all points of the horizon.

"Hum-m. There isn't a _sign_ of a buzz-wagon! Who pulled off that
stunt--on--us?" bleated a few of the mystified younger boys, while Stud
silently brushed moisture like cave-tears from his forehead.

So did the tall Scoutmaster, heavily breathing relief.

"Not an aeroplane in sight! Not a single one!" breezed the girls, all
ready to be angry. "Who--who put that hoax over?"

"Varnish right--and aeroplane wrong!" It was the freakish voice of a
nickum which answered. "No! No buzzer, as the boys say, but there was a
rattler, in there, beside that rock. If some of you girls had gone
ahead, you'd have stepped right on him!"

"A 'rattler!' A big rattlesnake! And--and you started the cry, to get us
out quietly--quickly!"

"Not we! The Scoutmaster had the presence of mind to launch an
aeroplane. We boomed it," came the laughing reply, as Jack at a Pinch,
second fiddle now, marched off with his companions.

"Who--is he?" Pemrose caught wildly at the arm of Stud, who was wishing
that he and not those patronizing big boys had caught the Scoutmaster's
cue and created airdrawn aeroplanes by the corps. "Do you--do you know
who he is; that biggest--that gaudiest--one among them?"

"Yes! No-o! I do--an' I don't!" stammered the boyish Henkyl Hunter.
"I--we--" indicating his scout brothers--"have met him a couple of times
in the woods; I guess his father an' he have a camp on the opposite side
of the lake from ours. We've talked with him--tried to be friendly. And
he--he's always jolly, you know--like now! But--but when it comes to
finding out anything about either of them, gee, you mig