twater will be the leader of the
party and in all things you will be under his direction. I do not think it
will be necessary for me to tell you that the discipline will be perhaps a
little more strict than it has been in the ranks of the patrol at home,
and while it will not be on an unrestricted army basis, there will be some
resemblance and I shall trust to your experience as Scouts to induce in
you cheerful acquiescence."

"It will be something like a campaign then," suggested Dick.

"It will be a good deal like a campaign," smilingly replied the Colonel,
"and while there will be much that is enjoyable and novel, there won't be
much peaches and cream about it. Plunging into a wilderness as you must,
you leave behind all the comforts and most of the sanitary safeguards of
civilization, and it is absolutely necessary for the preservation of your
health that you adopt certain rules of diet and comfort."

"Do we have to diet?" inquired Pepper, doubtfully, whose mind reverted to
certain milk and porridge days, imposed after an orgy of green fruit and
its consequent painful disturbances.

"I didn't use the word in the sense that you mean, Pepper," said Col.
Snow. "There will be plenty to eat and I hope well prepared, but you must
govern yourself as to how you deal with it. Food in most parts of Alaska
is a costly proposition, but I guess we shall have enough to go round
unless the wild life increases your already healthy appetites."

"I hae ma doots," said Don, falling into his Gaelic-accented English, as
he often did when he seemed to be wrestling with a problem, "if yon
appetite of Pepper's can increase much wi'out straining the capacity."

"Look after your own appetite," said Pepper, growing red, "I read once in
a book that four thousand years of oatmeal porridge, three times a day,
had wiped out every appetite and spoiled every stomach in Scotland."

"There, there," admonished Jack, "that'll be about all of that. You
fellows are about even now. The smallest sort of an appetite may prove to
be an inconvenience before we get out of Alaska."

"I want to say, Colonel," said Rand, rising and facing the army officer at
"attention," "that I think I speak for the whole patrol when I promise in
their names the most earnest fidelity and strict attention to rules and
regulations until our mission up here is finished."

"Yes, yes," echoed the Scouts, springing to their feet and saluting the
Colonel, who also rose and retu