alking. That is a better pace for fast travelling, except very
short distances, than a steady run, for it can be kept up much longer
without tiring, and Boy Scouts everywhere have learned to use it.

"Why do they call that Bald Mountain, I wonder?" said Pete, as they
went along. "It isn't bald any more'n I am. There are trees all over
the top."

"I don't know, Pete. Places get funny names, sometimes, just the same
way that people do. It doesn't make much difference, though, in the
case of a mountain."

"Nor people, either, Jack," said Pete Stubbs, stoutly. He had noticed
a queer look on his chum's face, and he remembered something that he
always had to be reminded of--the strange mystery of Jack's name.

He was called Jack Danby, but he himself, and a few of his best
friends, knew, that he had no real right to that name. What his own
real name was was something that was known to only one man, as far as
his knowledge went, and that one a man who was his bitter enemy, and
far more bent on harming him than doing him the favor of clearing up
the mystery of his birth and his strange boyhood at Woodleigh. There
Jack had lived in a cabin in the woods with a quaint old character
called Dan. He had always been known as Jack, and people had spoken of
him as Dan's boy. By an easy corruption that had been transformed into
Danby, and the name had stuck.

He had come to the city through the very Troop of Boy Scouts to which
he now belonged. They had been in camp near Woodleigh, and Jack had
played various pranks on them before he had struck up a great
friendship with one of them, little Tom Binns, and so had been allowed
by Durland to join the Scouts. More than that, Durland had persuaded
him to come to the city, and had found a job for him, in which Jack had
covered himself with glory, and done credit both himself and Durland,
who had recommended him.

"Gee, it's getting smoky," said Pete, as they reached the first gentle
rise at the foot of the mountain, though it had seemed to rise abruptly
when viewed from a distance.

"A woods fire always makes this sort of a thick, choking smoke.
There's a lot of damp stuff that burns with the dry wood. Leaves that
lie on the ground and rot make a good deal of the smoke, and then
there's a lot of moisture in the trees even in the driest weather."

"Sure there is, Jack! They take all the water there is when the rain
falls and keep it for the dry weather, don't they, like a