To Starrie Chase that sand-peak pedestal seemed to grow into a mountain and his uniformed figure to tower with it--become colossal--in the excitement of the moment! While, not twenty yards distant, behind a smaller sand-hillock, crouched another figure whose half-liberated groan the wind caught and tossed away like a feather as he gazed between clumps of beach-grass at the gesturing form of the scout. It was the same figure which had haunted the dunes, listening to the camp-fire revelry upon the boy scouts' first night in camp, the same which had so suddenly appeared upon the marshes near the pup-seal's creek. But distress seemed now to lie heavier upon that vagrant figure, instead of diminishing. For, as he still studied the light-girdled form of the signalman, Dave Baldwin vented a groan full and unmistakable, and blew upon a pair of burned hands. CHAPTER XVIII THE LOG SHANTY AGAIN "This fire has been the work of some incendiary--that's what I think!" was the opinion delivered later that night by the captain of the nearest fire-brigade, who, with his company, had been summoned by Leon's signaled message, passed on via telephone wires by the lighthouse men. "Of course, it may have been a case of accident or spontaneous combustion, but the former seems out of the question, seeing that the houses were empty, and the latter not probable," went on the grizzled chief. "Anyhow, I congratulate you on your boys, Mr. Scoutmaster! Under your leadership they certainly did good work in saving this whole summer colony." "So they did; I'm proud of them!" returned the scoutmaster impulsively, which made the three patrol leaders within hearing, Scout Warren of the Owls, Godey Peck of the Foxes, and Jesse Taber of the Seals, straighten their tired bodies, feeling repaid. "Well! I expect you'll see one or two officers landing upon these Sugarloaf Dunes to-morrow, to try and get at the cause of the fire," said the chief again. "It started in that shed where, so far as we know, there was nothing inflammable." "I ought to tell you," Scoutmaster Estey looked very grave, "that two of my scouts saw a man entering the shed," pointing to what was now a mere smouldering heap of ashes, "just about an hour, or a little over, before the fire broke out. When they first caught sight of him he was on the piazza of the bungalow itself, and seemed trying to get into the house." "Ho! Ho! I thought so. This is a case for the district police, I guess!" muttered the grizzled fire-chief.