d piercing realms of darkness,
and speaking to those who could understand. A sick child, somewhere or
other, saw it, and the watchful mother carried the little one to a
window the better to see this strange visitant.

"It's a search-light," she said. But to them it had no meaning. A merry
party returning home in the wee hours paused and watched it curiously
but it spoke to them not. At Knapp's Crossroads they saw it, just as the
harvest festival was breaking up, and Hank Sparker and Sophia Coyson
lingered on their way home to watch it. But it spoke not their language.

Did it speak to any one, this voice calling in the dark? Did any one
understand it? Were there no telegraph operators in any of the stations
along the line? They would understand. Was there no one?

No one?...

CHAPTER XIX

PAGE TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-FOUR

If Pee-wee had stolen a glimpse from the buffalo robe at about the time
that he was writing under difficulties his momentous message to the
world, he might have noticed a little old-fashioned house nestling among
the trees along the roadside.

At that time the house was dark save for a lamp-light in a little window
up under the eaves. Little the speeding hero knew that up in that tiny
room there sat a boy engrossed with the only scout companion that he
knew, and that was the scout handbook. It had come to him by mail a few
days before.

This boy lived with his widowed mother, Mrs. Mehetable Piper. His name
was Peter, but whether he was descended from the renowned Peter Piper
who picked a peck of pickled peppers, the present chronicler does not
know. At the time in question he was eating the handbook alive. The
speeding auto passed, the mighty Bridgeboro scout pinned his missive to
his remnant of sandwich and hurled it out into the dark world, the boy
up in the little room went on reading with hungry eyes, and that is all
there was to that.

Peter belonged to no troop, for in that lonely country there was no
troop to belong to. He had no scoutmaster, no one to track and stalk and
go camping with, no one to jolly him as Pee-wee had. Away off in
National Headquarters he was registered as a pioneer scout. He had his
certificate, he had his handbook, that is all. It is said in that book
that a scout is a brother to every other scout, but this scout's
brothers were very far away and he had never seen any of them. He
wondered what they looked like in their trim khaki attire. He could
hardl