Leon's fingers groped upon the ground, where twilight shadows were merging into darkness, for another apple. Since he enlisted as a boy scout mischief had been sentenced and shut up in a dark little cell inside him. But Malign Habit, though a captive, dies hard. Those seeking fingers touched something else, a worm-eaten shingle blown from the old roof. He picked it up and considered it in the darkness, while his left hand felt in his pocket for some twine. "Gee! it would be a great night for that trick to work," he muttered with a low chuckle that had less depth to it than a parrot's. "The wind is just in the right direction--driving straight through the house. Eh, Blink! Shall we 'get her on a string' again?" The dog whined softly with impatience. Of late, in his short excursions with his master, he had not been used to such stealthy doings. With the exception of the trailing expeditions through the woods from which canines were debarred, movements had been open, manly, and aboveboard since the master became a boy scout. But Leon had forgotten that he was a scout, had momentarily forgotten even the outdoor test in Sparrow Hollow, and the necessary preparations therefor. His fingers trifled with the shingle and string. His brain going ahead of those fingers was already attaching the one to the other when--the paintless door opened and Ma'am Baldwin stepped out. She did look like a wind-torn corn-stalk, short and withered, with the breeze catching at the many-colored strips of shawls that hung around her, uniting to protect her somewhat against that marsh-wind driving straight from the river through her home. From her left hand drooped a pale lantern, the one with which boyish imagination had accused her of working spells. It made an island of yellow light about her as she stepped slowly forth into the dusk. And Leon saw her raise her right arm to her breast with that timid, pathetic movement characteristic of old people--especially of those whom life has treated harshly--as if she was afraid of what might spring upon her out of the gusty darkness. Not for nothing had Starrie Chase been for two months a boy scout! Prior to those eight weeks of training that feebly defensive arm would have meant naught to him; hardly would he have noticed it. But just as his eyes had been opened to consider at length, with a dazzled thrill, that distant Sugarloaf Sand-Pillar and other of Nature's beauties as he had seldom or never contemplated them before; so those scout's eyes were being trained to remark each significant gesture of another person and to read its meaning. Somehow, that right arm laid across an old woman's breast told a tale of loneliness and lack of defenders which made the boy wince. The distance widened between his two hands holding respectively the shingle and string.