"He seemed jolly glad to see us," Nixon again took up the anecdote; "just beamed! But he didn't apparently understand a word of English except 'Good-day!' not even when we passed the scout motto to him as a watchword: 'Be Prepared!' We might all three have been mutes saluting each other. "We talked it over, coming home, Marcoo and I," went on the patrol leader. "And we arrived at the conclusion that it would be a great thing if our hearty motto, as Captain Andy calls it, could be taught to boy scouts all over the world, in some common form understood by all, as well as in their mother tongue. So that when scout meets scout of another country he could pass it on as a kind of bond and inspiration--together with the Scout Sign which is understood in almost every land to-day." "So we looked it up in Esperanto--the only attempt at a world-language of which we know, and in which my father is interested." Marcoo leaped to his feet, too, as he excitedly spoke. "And it sounded fine! Give it to them, Nix!" "_Estu preta!_" "Estu preta! Estu preta! BE PREPARED!" One and all these present-day scouts took it up, shouting it to the seven fires, and to the wind which caught it from their lips like a silver feather to bear it away beyond the hollow, as if it would girdle the world with that hearty motto, in some universal form, as Nixon had suggested. "Estu preta!" it was still on their tongues when, camp-fires extinguished, they marched home. They flung it at each other in joyous challenge as they said good-night. It entwined itself with the drowsy thoughts of the patrol leader from whom it emanated when he lay down to sleep, eclipsing his interest in the future summer camp, in marbled seals and cooing pup-seals--though such might not have been the case could he have foreseen how exciting would be his first glimpse of the "gros seal" at close quarters. It mingled with Leon's dreamy reminiscences too, as the first ripple of slumber, like the inflowing tide, invaded his consciousness. "Whew! this certainly has been a great day," he murmured, after repeating the Lord's Prayer with an elated fervor which he had never put into it before. Yet there was one smirch upon the day's golden face in the sudden memory of an old woman shrinking away from him with uplifted arm. "Gee! I wish I could do something for her beyond a few good turns." His drowsy tongue half-formed the words. And like a silver echo, stealing through his confused consciousness came the automatic answer: "_Estu preta!_ Live up to your able motto! Be Prepared!" CHAPTER XII THE CHRISTMAS BRIGADE