er boys
turned in at what seemed to them unseemly hours, while scout veterans
sat up overhauling the day's doings for an occasion of a laugh against
somebody, practical joke, of course, preferred, to be published in the
Henkyl Hunter's typewritten Bulletin and hung up in the porch next
morning.

"Well! I'm safe for the Grand March, anyhow--and the Virginia reel, too,
eh!" Stud dug congratulatory fists into his brown sides, wriggling
aggressively upon the cliff-brow, like Peagreen figuratively hugging the
ground with an impatient nose.

Privately he was inclined to the opinion that the blue-eyed girl's
friend who had that little nearsighted stand in one of her dark eyes,
and two dimples to Pemrose's one, was the daintier "peach" of the
two--and that his own sister, Jess, was as pretty as either; but think
of the distinction of leading off with a girl whose father would lead
off amid the dance of planets, in sending a messenger to the moon, Mars,
too, maybe!

"Whoopee!" He kicked the sod as if spurning it as common or garden
earth--although there were moments when, like others--elders--in a
skeptical world, he told himself that the Thunder Bird would prove,
after all, a Flying Dutchman,--just an extravagant dream.

"So--so you were out on the lake this morning, studying pond life with
the professor," he said, alluding to the Scoutmaster. "He's instructor
in a college and each year he gets us started on something; last summer
it was astronomy--he brought a small telescope along."

Pem's heels drummed more excitedly on the sod--the starry heavens were
_her_ scope.

"But we have a good deal of fun with the big compound microscope,
too--and more without it," acknowledged Studley. "Fancy last week we
caught a huge pike which had jumped clear out of the water, on to the
bank, after a water-hen!"

"Where was that? How--how big was it?" The girlish questions mounted
helter-skelter.

"The pike? Oh! he weighed about fifteen pounds. It was right over there,
on the other side of the lake," pointing to the spot where the party
interested in egg-boats had landed that morning. "He--he gobbled the
hen, too."

"_Did_ he?" But he might have been threatening to gobble her,
judging by the start which the girl gave at the moment.

Her heart jumped down to the water's edge as abruptly as did the cliff
beneath her.

Her eyes were on a boat rowing out of the sunset's eye directly across
the lake from that very spot.

There was