The demurring "but" in this boy's mind sprang from the proviso that if he enlisted in the Boy Scouts of America, he would be obliged, like Leon, to part with his gun. Also, from a feeling that he would be debarred in future from the planning of such lawless escapades as playing stowaway aboard an unlaunched vessel; a scheme, it may be said, which was never carried through, being nipped in the bud by watchful shipwrights! Godey Peck was on the fence with regard to the new movement. And he did not yet know on which side he would drop down. Meanwhile from his wavering point of indecision, beset with discomfort, he soothed his feelings by renewed and vehement shouts of "Tin Scouts! Tin Soldiers!" whenever a khaki uniform and broad drab hat hove in view. He had ample opportunity to air his feeble-shafted malice during the week preceding Christmas, for scouts, in uniform and out of it, were constantly to be seen engaged in "hifalutin stunts," according to Godey, which meant that they had been organized into a brigade by the scoutmaster for the doing of sundry and many good turns befitting the season. It might be only the carrying of parcels, for a heavy-laden woman, who had visited a distant city on a shopping expedition, from the little railway station on the edge of the yellow wintry salt-marshes to her home! Or the bearing of gifts from a benevolent individual or society to some poor or solitary human brother or sister who otherwise might forget the meaning of Christmas. It was on behalf of one such person that Corporal Leon Chase--detailed for duty on this brigade--took counsel with his mother on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. "You don't suppose that _she'll_ stay alone in that old baldfaced house to-day and to-morrow, do you, mother?" he said, rather ambiguously. "The town authorities ought to forbid her living on there all by herself; she'll be snowed in pretty soon if this cold snap continues. Why! the river is all frozen over--ice fairly firm too. I'm going skating by an' by." "I'd wait until it is a little more solid, if I were you," returned the mother anxiously. "You know our brackish ice is apt to be treacherous; the salt in the water softens it, so your father says, renders it more porous and unsafe. I suppose you were speaking of old Ma'am Baldwin. I don't see what the authorities can do. They can't force her into an institution; she owns that old house. And I don't know that her daughter's husband--little Jack's father--wants her in his home. It's too bad that her son Dave should have turned out such a good-for-nothing! Trouble about him has aged her, I guess; she's not as old as she seems."