to each other, and at night
they would go into their gardens, and scout would howl to scout in such
mournful, long-drawn notes that peaceful, elderly gentlemen, reading
the evening paper after dinner, rushed out to see if murder was being
done somewhere.

CHAPTER III

CHIPPY HEARS OF NEW THINGS

One Saturday afternoon Chippy, the leader of the wharf-rats of
Skinner's Hole, was crossing the heath on his way home. He had been
with a message to a village some three miles from Bardon, and was
taking a short cut over the heath, which he knew from side to side and
corner to corner. Suddenly he stopped. He had heard a strange
noise--a sound as of chanting or singing--and he wondered where it came
from. In a moment he had fixed the place.

'That's in the old sand-'ole,' he muttered to himself, and he shuffled
across the heath in his big, clumsy, hob-nailed boots towards the spot.
In a couple of minutes he had wormed his way between two gorse-bushes
growing at the edge of the deep hollow, and was looking with much
interest at the sight beneath him.

It was the Wolf Patrol practising the scouts' war-dance. The old
deserted sandpit made a splendid place for their patrol meetings for
open-air work. They had come there that afternoon for practice in Test
12--fire-laying and lighting, and cooking flour and potatoes without
utensils. But, first of all, they were practising the war-dance. The
strange words of the Scouts' Song floated up to Chippy's ears, but he
could make nothing of them:

'Ingonyama--gonyama
Invooboo
Yah bobo! Yah bobo!
Invooboo.

But though Chippy did not understand the words, he understood that
those fellows down there looked splendidly smart, and were having a
fine time. He admired their uniform immensely; it looked so trim and
neat compared with his own ragged garb. He admired their neat, quick
movements as they stamped in unison with the words of the song, and
moved round in a circle. The 'Ingonyama' chorus ended, and then the
fire practice began. Chips and sticks were carefully piled, and a
scout was allowed two matches to make a rousing fire of the gorse-stems
and dried sticks to be found in the coppices on the heath. Then he
went to work with his flour and potatoes.

Finally the patrol organized a hunt to finish the afternoon. George
Lee was sent off on tracking-irons, and given ten minutes' start. When
the time was up, the others went after him, and the sandpit wa