an tell what might happen. Even those
boys have got something in them that can be brought out, if only one
knows how to go about it. Don't you forget, fellows, that some of the
greatest men this country has ever known, were born among the mountains.
And right now there may be a future president of the United States
within ten miles of where we sit."

"Hear! hear!" cried Step Hen, pretending to clap his hands in applause.

"Huh! nearer than that, mebbe," declared Bumpus, mysteriously swelling
out his chest and looking every inch the hero; "how would the name of
Cornelius Jasper Hawtree sound to you? We've never had a President
Hawtree; but that ain't no reason we never will, is it? Tell me that."

"Give it up," sang out Davy Jones.

"Anyhow, it'd sound more distinguished than plain Jones," retorted
Bumpus.

"My name isn't Plain Jones, it's David Alexander Constantine Josephus,
and a few more that, to tell the honest truth; I've forgot," the other
went on.

Thad and Allan drew apart from all this mimic warfare, in which the
fun-loving scouts liked to indulge from time to time.

"Then you did talk with Bob?" asked the former, with some show of
eagerness in his voice.

"Yes," replied Allan, "it was great fun too. Waited a little while
before I could get the first answer to all my waving; but in the end I
saw a flash, like a match had been struck, and then we got in touch."

"What did Bob have to tell?" asked the patrol leader.

"He met his little cousin, all right, just as they had arranged," Allan
went on to say. "And she must have told him something that has made our
chum wild with delight, for he says the trip paid him twenty times over.
Just what it was he didn't try to tell me, saying it would have to keep
till he got to camp."

"Well, we can give a pretty good guess what it must be," Thad observed.

"You mean that Bertha has looked, and made a discovery among the papers
in her guardian's safe; is that it, Thad?"

"Just about; but we'll have to quit guessing, and just wait till he
comes in," said the scoutmaster, who knew just how to take a grip upon
himself, and appear patient, where some of the other boys would have
fretted, and worried greatly.

"He oughtn't to be more'n an hour, at the most," suggested Allan.

"Not unless something happens to him, which we hope it won't," replied
Thad.

"You don't think now, do you," demanded the other, "that Old Phin might
take a notion to waylay him, just to h