do you say, Matty? Is Red Huggins right?"

Seven boys had come to a halt in the heart of the big woods. They were a
rather husky-looking set, all told, and evidently bent on getting all
the benefit possible from being outdoors through the last few weeks of
vacation time.

The one appealed to, Matty Eggleston by name, was something of a leader
among the Hickory Ridge Troop of Boy Scouts.

In fact, he was at the head of the Beaver Patrol, and studying
constantly in order to attain the rank of a first-class scout.

There are so very many things a boy must know in order to reach this
ambition that comparatively few scouts ever attain it. But by
concentrating all his energies upon one particular study he may earn a
merit badge, which it will make him proud to wear.

Matty took the piece of bark from the cloven stick. The other six boys
clustered eagerly around, anxious to see what sort of message it could
be that the assistant scout master had left in the trail.

They were out to try a new experience, and one that appealed to every
boy in the bunch.

A party of the scouts, their identity and number unknown to Elmer and
the balance, had started off for the woods early in the day.

An hour later, Elmer, with one companion, had taken up the trail, and
when a second hour had elapsed the balance of those who were bent upon
playing the game left town in two detachments.

It had been arranged that Elmer was to act as pathfinder and tracker. He
would in turn leave a plain trail that a child could follow.

Besides this, he had promised to transmit from time to time some sort of
message. Thus those who came along in the rear, in two detachments,
would be kept in touch with events, and also advised as to what they
should do.

The party bringing up the rear was headed by Mark Cummings, who was
Elmer's particular chum. He was really the bugler of the troop; but for
this occasion Elmer himself carried that instrument, with the idea of
calling the scouts together at some time later on.

"Hey, look at that, would you; it's all marked up with crow's feet
tracks!" exclaimed Landy Smith, a rather fat boy who had only recently
joined the Wolf Patrol, making the eighth and last member.

"What's Elmer think we are, a lot of kids, to leave us an illustrated
rebus to guess? Looks to me like a little boy's first try to draw cows
and Noah's Ark people."

Some of the others laughed when George Robbins gave expression to his
disgust i