d by every camper on the grounds. At the first
signal boys came scampering from all directions. Some carried
towels--too much excited to drop them in their camps; others dashed
through the woods with sweaters on their arms, and reluctant neckties
in their fists, for it was early and the campers had scarcely time to
make "careful" toilets.

"Grub?" they asked in chorus. "Let us see it? Lead us to it!"

"Grub nothing!" replied Walter. "You just get outside on that bench,
the overflow can take the reserved seats on the nice green moss. This
meeting has been called for the purpose of organizing the Housewives'
League of Crystal Bay."

"Aoo-oo-ou--oh!" came a groaning reply from those who felt able to
groan. "And I left sugar in my coffee cup," wailed he with the dish
towel.

"And there were perfectly good crumbs at my place," sighed Teddy, a
boy with so many colors in his face that they called him "Rainbow."

"Come to order!" called Jack, banging on the tent table, which was to
serve as the chairman's desk. "Every camp must qualify."

"We do! We do!" shouted the majority, the rest being engaged in a
rough and tumble for places near the "door."

"The purpose of this meeting," went on Jack, ducking a lump of moss
tossed in lieu of a bouquet, "is to formulate plans, whereby the
humans of Prowlers' Paradise may continue to defy the birds of the
air, and the beasts of the field, and live in a perfectly human way."

"Hurrah for the humans!" shouted Rainbow, and the cheers that followed
did more than merely consume time.

"Let me explain," interrupted Dray, pushing Jack from his place, and
taking the stand pompously. "We have been the victims of prowlers. We
have lost our soup; we also lost our cans of milk--in fact, the cruel
ones took everything but our appetites, and now we propose to put a
stop to such depredations. We will form a league to borrow and to
lend, also to pay back, but he who taketh his brother's soup and
returneth not a can of beans shall be expelled from the Prowlers'
Paradise!"

"We did lose five small cans of milk," reiterated Walter to Dave, the
head or chief of a big camp called "We-like-it," "and if we find the
rowdy who took that he shall be court-martialed."

A commotion then started that broke up the meeting. The boys, in
rolling and tumbling about, rolled Dainty, so-called because he never
could get enough to eat, and because his quest showed in unweighable
pounds of fat, deliberately down