voice may have been, away off in the big world,
and none could say how far or near, or where or how it spoke, calling in
the endless wilderness of night. But it spoke to Peter Piper, of Piper's
Crossroads, to Peter Piper, pioneer scout.

And Peter Piper, with the aid of the only scout companion that he had,
read it and was _prepared_, as it is the way of a scout to be.

He did not dare to hope that he was being drawn into the actual circle
of scouting; he would not know how to act among those natty strangers.
Wonderful as they were, with their pathfinding and all that, they could
hardly penetrate to his humble, sequestered little home. Peter Piper of
Piper's Crossroads was not going to allow himself to dream any
extravagantly impossible dreams. The nickel flashlight and a
correspondence with some unknown "brother," that was as far as his hopes
carried.

He had still a lingering and persistent feeling that this whole amazing
business was unreal; that he had been dreaming it or at least reading a
meaning where there was none. He knew that he could see trees and the
stars in Hawley's pond when there were none there. Might not this be the
same? He had expected sometime or other to make a signal fire and give
this scout voice a try-out with some simple word. He had not expected to
be aroused and called to service by its spectral, mysterious command.

What should he do? Set it down to his own deceiving fancy and go back to
his handbook? Return to the wholesome realities of stalking and trailing
which filled those engrossing pages? Poor Peter Piper felt that he had
made a sort of bold excursion from Piper's Crossroads into the realm of
miracles and that he had better not let that weird apparition over
beyond the graveyard dupe and mock him. Perhaps he had been "seein'
things." Yet there were the long and short flashes and they had spelled
that warning message, or else he had gone out of his senses or been
dreaming. He hardly knew what to think, now that he had time to think.

His credulity soon gained the upper hand, he began to doubt his own
eyes, and he was just a bit ashamed of what he was resolved to do. At
all events he would have the delight of doing it, and no one would know.
He would act just as a _real_ scout would _really_ act if the message
was _real_ and _true_.

Stealing down the creaky, boxed-in stairs, he got a lantern from the
kitchen and lighted it. The actual performance of this practical act
made his e