Leon's eyes were beady with malicious triumph. His breath came in short excited puffs. So did the terrier's. It boded ill for the tormented chipmunk cowering at the farthest end of the desecrated hole. "Hullo! that's two against one and it isn't fair play. _Quit it!_" suddenly burst forth a ringing boyish voice. "The chip' was faster than the dog--he ought to have an even chance for his life, anyhow!" Leon, crouching by the hole, looked up in petrified amazement. It was Nixon Warren, the stranger to these woods, who spoke. The tormentor broke into an insulting laugh. "Eh--what's the matter with _you_, Chicken-heart?" he sneered. "None o' your business whether it's fair or not!" A flash leaped from the gray eyes under Nixon's broad hat that defied the sneer applied to him. His chest heaved under the Khaki shirt with whose metal buttons a sunbeam played winsomely, while with defiant vehemence Leon worked his probing stick deeper, deeper into the hole where the mite of a chipmunk shrank before the cruel goad that would ultimately force it forth to meet the whirlwind of the dog's attack. Colin and Coombsie held their breath, feeling as if they could see the trembling "chipping" fugitive pressed against the farthest wall of its enlarged retreat. Another minute, and out it must pop to death. But upon the dragging, prodding seconds of that minute broke again the voice of the chipmunk's champion--hot and ringing. "_Quit that!_" it exploded. "Stop wiggling the stick in the hole--or I'll make you!" "You'll make me, eh? Oh! run along home to Mamma--that's where your place is!" But right upon the heels of the sneer a sharp question rushed from Leon's lips: "Who are you--anyhow--to tell me to stop?" And the tall trees bowed their noble heads, the grasses ceased their whispering, even the seventeen-year locust, shrilling in the distance, seemed to suspend its piping note to listen to the answer that rushed bravely forth:-- "I'm a Boy Scout! A Boy Scout of America! I've promised to do a good turn to somebody--or something--every day. I'm going to do it to that chipmunk! Stop working that stick in the hole!" "Gee whiz! I thought there was something queer about you from the first." The mouth of Starrie Chase yawned until it rivaled the enlarged hole. Sitting on his heels, his cruel probing momentarily suspended, he gazed up, as at a newfangled sort of animal, at this daring Boy Scout of America--this Scout of the U.S.A. CHAPTER III RACCOON JUNIOR "Scout or no scout, you are not going to boss me!" Thus Starrie Chase broke the breathless silence that reigned for half a minute in the woods, following upon Nixon's declaration that he was a boy scout, bound by the scout law to protect the weak among human beings and animals. For the space of that half-minute the tormenting stick had ceased to probe the hole. The wretched chipmunk, cowering in the farthest corner of its once neat retreat, had a respite.