mber of
their Scout Council. But not until this summer had he developed into
their chief mentor, and fairy godfather.

Now to his surprise, added to his other unsought honors, he found
himself the director of the Greek pageant, one of the performers as
well, and far more popular with his fellow-players than he yet
appreciated.

Daily they were coming to him with their problems and their ambitions.
As yet their confidences related only to the approaching performance.

Lance's question was more general than any other that had been
propounded. While Mr. Fenton was replying he looked at Lance with more
interest than he had felt in the boy before.

If no one else understood what he was endeavoring to make plain, he
believed that Tory and Lance would catch the import of his words.

"Among the nations the Greeks are rarely fortunate," Mr. Fenton began.
"They left us such inheritances that we have remembered their great
days; with other nations we are too apt to recall the years of their
decay, their mistakes.

"Perhaps one reason for this is that the Greeks were our forefathers,
a branch of the Aryan-speaking peoples who in the faint twilight of
early history, a nomadic, wandering people, moved southward, and
combined with the inhabitants of Crete. This gives us the story of the
Odyssey, one of the two great Greek poems, but more filled with legend
than the story of the Iliad, which is the siege of Troy."

Mr. Fenton paused.

"I am not tiring you too much? Still I must go on. We must try as far
as we can to understand what we have undertaken to present to others.
And I have not yet told you what I mean by the Greek spirit.

"It revealed itself even as far back as these two poems. The Greeks
were then possessed of two great passions, the love of adventure and
the love of beauty. Those two possessions I want to be equally the
heritage of the American Girl and Boy Scouts.

"Later, in what is known as the Age of Pericles, the Greeks entered
into their third ardor, Democracy, the love of freedom. So what I call
the Greek spirit is the love and pursuit of these three things:
Beauty, Adventure, Freedom.

"I might talk longer and you would understand me less well. Understand,
there may be danger in these three desires. One must not seek beauty,
adventure and freedom at the expense of other people, but in order to
share it with others as the Greeks have done.

"Now I am through with my lecture, will some one give me a ha