Scout Nixon Warren, henceforth to be known as the patrol leader of the Owls, was himself possessed by the excited feeling that he was faring forth, into the October woods to tackle a dragon--the obstinate Hobgoblin of confirmed Fear--when on the day following that first boy scout meeting in Exmouth he took his way, accompanied by Coombsie, over the heaving uplands that lay between the salt-marshes and the woodland. Thence, through thick grove and undergrowth, they tramped to the little farm-clearing, where they had come upon Toiney and the dead raccoon. Nixon had arrayed himself in the full bravery of his scout uniform to-day, hoping that it might attract the attention of the frightened boy whose interest he wished to capture. The October sun burnished his metal buttons, with the oxidized silver badge upon his left arm beneath the white bars of the patrol leader, and the white stripe at his wrist recording his one year's service as a scout. Because of the impression they hoped to produce, Marcoo too had donned the uniform, minus stripes and badge--the latter he would not be entitled to wear until after the all-important next meeting when, on his passing the tenderfoot test, the scoutmaster would pin it on his shirt, but reversed until he should have proved his right to wear that badge of chivalry by the doing of some initial good turn. But Marcoo, like his companion, carried the long scout staff and was loud in his appreciation of its usefulness on a woodland hike. And thus, a knightly-looking pair of pilgrims, they issued forth into the forest clearing, bathed in the early afternoon sun. As before, their ears were tickled afar off by the sound of a tuneful voice alternately whistling and singing, though to-day it was unaccompanied by the woodchopper's axe. "That's Toiney!" said Marcoo. "Listen to him! He's just 'full of it'; isn't he?" Toiney was indeed full to the brim and bubbling over with the primitive, zestful joy of life as he toiled upon the little woodland farm, cutting off withered cornstalks from a patch which earlier in the season had been golden with fine yellow maize of his planting. His lithe, energetic figure focused the sun rays which loved to play over his knitted cap of dingy red, with a bobbing tassel, over the rough blue shirt of homespun flannel, and upon the queer heelless high boots of rough unfinished leather, with puckered moccasin-like feet, in which he could steal through the woods well-nigh as noiselessly as the dog-fox himself. As the two scouts emerged into the open he was singing to the sunbeams and to the timid human "Hare" who basked in his brightness, a funny little fragment of song which he illustrated as though he had a sling in his hand and were letting fly a missile:-- "Gaston Guè, si j'avais ma fron-de, Gaston Guè, je te l'aurais fron-dé!" This he translated for Harold's benefit:-- "Gaston Guè, if I haf ma sling, Gaston Guè, at you I vould fling!"