"That's how it strikes me," returned the doctor. "If it will only keep Starrie Chase, as they call him, sailing in an opposite direction to my doorbell, I'm sure I shall bless it! D'you know, Andy," the gray-bearded physician addressed the weatherbeaten sea-fighter beside him as he had done when they were schoolboys together, "when I heard how that boy Leon had sprained his ankle badly in the woods and that the family had sent for me, I said: 'Serve him right! _Let_ him be tied by the leg for a while and meditate on the mischief of his ways; I'm not going to see him!' Of course, before the words were well out, I had picked up my bag and was on my way to the Chase homestead!" "Of course you were!" Captain Andy beamed upon his friend until his large face with its coating of ruddy tan flamed like an aurora borealis under the electric lights of the little town hall in which the first boy scout meeting was held. "Trust you, Doc!" The ex-skipper knew that no man of his acquaintance lived up to the twelve points of the scout law in more thorough fashion than did this country doctor, who never by day or night closed his ears against the call of distress. "I'll say this much for the young rascal, he was ashamed to see me bring out my bandages"; the doctor now nodded humorously in the direction of Leon Chase, who made one of a semicircle composed of Nixon, himself and six other boys, at present seated round the young scoutmaster whom they had chosen to be leader of the new movement in their town. "But by and by his tongue loosened somewhat," went on the grizzled medical man, "and he began to take me into his confidence about the formation of this boy scout patrol; he seemed more taken up with that than with what he called 'the thunderstorm in his ankle.' Leon isn't one to knuckle under much to pain, anyhow! Somehow, as he talked, I began to feel as if we hadn't been properly facing the problem of our boys in and about this town, Andy." "I see what you mean!" Captain Andrew nodded. "Leon is as full of tricks as a tide rip in a gale o' wind. An' that's the most mischievous thing I know!" with a reminiscent chuckle. "But what can you do? If a boy is chockfull o' bubbling energy that's going round an' round in a whirl inside him, like the rip, it's bound to boil over in mischief, if there ain't a deep channel to draw it off."