"Flag-signaling in the Boy Scout Handbook. I can send a message by semaphore now, twenty letters per minute; I must get it down to sixteen before I can pass the examination for first-class scout!" Starrie threw this out impetuously, his face glowing. "We're going to have an outdoor test in some other things this evening--if I pass it I'll be a second-class scout. I don't want to be a tenderfoot for ever! Say! but the signaling gets me; it's so interesting: I'm beginning to study the Morse code now." "Pshaw! You boy scouts jus' make me tired." Godey leaned against the parapet of the broad bridge above the tidal river whereon the boys stood, as if the contemplation of so much energy ambitiously directed was too much for him. "Here comes another of your kind now!" He pointed to Colin Estey who came swinging along out of the distance, his quick springy step and upright carriage doing credit to the scouts' drill. Colin halted ere crossing the bridge to hail a street-car for an old gentleman who was making futile attempts to stop it, and then courteously helped him to the platform. Godey shook his head over the action. "Cock-a-doodle-doo!" he crowed scornfully. "Ain't we acting hifalutin?" Yet there was nothing at all bombastic about the simple good turn or in Colin's bright face as he joined the other scout upon the bridge and marched off homeward with him, their rhythmic step and erect carriage attracting the attention of more than one adult pedestrian. Godey lolled on the parapet, looking after them, racking his brain for some derisive epithet to hurl at their backs; he longed to shout, "Sissies!" and "Spongecakes!" But such belittling terms clearly didn't apply. The only mocking shaft in his quiver that would come anywhere near hitting the mark of those well-drilled backs--straight as a rod--was one which even he felt to be feeble:-- "Oh! you Tin Scouts," he shouted maliciously. "Tin Soldiers! _Tin Scouts!_" sustaining the cry until the two figures disappeared from view in the direction of the Chase homestead. CHAPTER X THE BALDFACED HOUSE But Leon did not study signaling and the Morse alphabet that afternoon. He was presently dispatched by his father, who owned a pleasant home on the outskirts of the town, on an errand to a farm some two miles distant on the uplands that skirted the woods. The afternoon had all the spicy beauty of early November, with a slight frost in the air. The fresh breeze laughed like a tomboy as it romped over the salt-marshes. Each eddying dimple in the tidal river shone like a star sapphire, while the broad, brackish channel wound in and out between the marshes with as many wriggles as a lively trout.