red over the heath, affording excellent cover, and
through these clumps the trainer would lay a track which each boy must
follow for a quarter of a mile, and make the journey within fifteen
minutes.

Five boys were successful, among these being Arthur Graydon and Dick
Elliott. Three boys failed, not because their eyesight was poorer than
that of the rest, but simply because they were unobservant, and did not
pick up the trail quickly at one or two points where Mr. Elliott laid
little traps for them, for he did not believe in making the test too
easy.

'Well,' said Dick's uncle, 'five of you rank as second-class scouts
now, and can make a beginning with a patrol; the other three will
qualify next time, I expect.' And he took the failures in hand and
showed them where they had slipped up in tracking his spoor. Mixed
with instruction, he told them stories of the wonderful tracking he had
seen performed in South Africa by both white men and natives, and the
afternoon passed all too quickly for the deeply interested boys.

'What shall we call our patrol?' asked George Lee, one of the
successful boys in passing the tests, as they walked home.

'I vote for Wolf!' cried Dick--'the Wolf Patrol! That sounds jolly, I
think.'

'Yes, we'll have that--the Wolf,' said Arthur Graydon.

'We must wait a little,' said Mr. Elliott, 'and see if any other
patrols have been formed in Bardon. It won't do to clash, but I'll see
about that.'

Mr. Elliott made inquiries, and found that though there was some talk
of forming patrols here and there, yet not one was actually in
existence in the neighbourhood. So Dick and his friends became 1st
Bardon Troop, Wolf Patrol, and were very proud of that fact.

The Wolf Patrol now turned to with a will to convert themselves from
second-class scouts into first-class. Arthur Graydon was chosen patrol
leader, and Dick Elliott was the corporal. Whenever the Wolves met
each other they gave the scouts' salute with great care, the rank and
file receiving the secret sign in half-salute, while Arthur Graydon, as
patrol-leader, was greeted with the full salute. Their pocket-money
went like water for patrol flags, badges, crests, and tracking-irons,
and every boy rigged himself up with khaki shorts and a khaki hat with
broad brim, in proper scouts' style. Above all, they practised without
ceasing the wolf's howl, which was the secret call of their patrol.
Several of the Wolf Patrol lived quite near