20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8

T U V W X Y Z
7 6 5 4 3 2 1

He began deciphering the message with a concentration never meted out to
his school work. Five minutes of effort resulted in:

John. Meet at the shack after school today all the Tigers there.
Bill.

He caught Silvey's gaze upon him and nodded to show that he had received
the note. The pair would have met on the way home from school, anyway,
but what was the use of a secret code unless it was used at every
possible opportunity?

The shack was a rickety, frame affair, built during the long summer
vacation when time hung heavy on the boys' hands, and the tribal desire
for a stronghold waxed too strong to be denied. Three of the walls were
formed of odd planks scavenged from neighboring woodpiles and fences,
eked out, here and there, with a few pantry shelves taken from vacant
houses. The fourth was nothing but the picket fence, but as Silvey
expressed it when viewing their handiwork, "It doesn't rain much from
the north, anyway." Door for the low entrance there was not, and the
roof, whose shingles were purchased by an arduously earned half-dollar,
became a veritable sieve when the raindrops were pounded through by a
driving gale from the lake.

The furnishings consisted of a chair, which had long since parted with
its back, and a small, shaky desk which had in some way survived the
interval between its Christmas presentation and the fall school term. In
the one drawer were kept the original of the "Tigers'" secret code, a
twenty-five cent rubber stamp outfit which had been used to print the
set of membership rules, beginning, "I. No swearing," and two sadly
battered, springless, and rusty revolvers. Where they had originated, no
one could remember, but there they lay, unsuspected by parental
authorities, to be used as a possible defense against the incursions of
the "Jefferson Toughs," who ruled the district to the immediate north,
or to be dragged forth, as in the present case, to lend an air of
solemnity to the many plots hatched between the four cramped walls.

Red Brown descended the side steps into the yard, in answer to the
summons of the clan, and found John in his role of master-at-arms,
strutting back and forth before the doorway. Silvey, as befitted the
holder of the exalted office of president, was sitting inside on the
crippled chair. John whipped the more formidable of the two weapons from
his back pocket and pointed