Toiney's contempt for the skulking vagrant who had caused his mother's heart to "break in pieces," had communicated itself to them. They were much more interested in the prospect of pursuing acquaintance with the spotted harbor seal, once the floundering despot of the tidal river, now scarcer and more shy. As winter merged into spring a third patrol of boy scouts was formed, composed of boys from farms down the river, who had recourse to this harbor mammal for a name and called themselves the Seals. Thus when April swelled the buds upon the trees, and the salt-marshes were all feathery with new green, there were three patrols of boy scouts who met in the little town hall of Exmouth, forming a complete scout troop, to plan for hikes and summer camps; and to go on their cheery way out of meeting, ofttimes creating spring in the heart of winter by doing the regulation good turn for somebody. In especial, good turns toward the sorrow-bowed old woman, Ma'am Baldwin, were in vogue that season, because a first-rate recipe for sympathy is to perform a service for its object. The greater and more risky the service, the broader the stream of good will that flows from it! So it was with the four members of the Owl Patrol who had received the boy scout medal for life-saving--the silver cross suspended from a blue ribbon, awarded to the scout who saves life with considerable risk to himself--for their gallant work in rescuing the old woman's grandson from the frozen waters of the tidal river. Their own moved feelings at that the finest moment of their young lives were thereafter as a shining mantle veiling the peculiarities of her who, solitary and defenseless, had once been regarded as fair game for their most merciless teasing. She was not so solitary now. Much shaken by the accident to her grandchild, she was in no fit state to return to her baldfaced house on Christmas Eve or for many days after; so Public Opinion at length took the matter into its own hands and decreed that henceforth she must find a home with her daughter. There, in a little dwelling on the outskirts of the town, she often watched the khaki-clad scouts march by. Invariably they saluted her. And Jack, the rescued nine-year-old, would strut and stretch and stamp in a vain attempt to hasten the advent of his twelfth birthday when he might enlist as a tenderfoot. The Saturday spring hikes were varied by trips down the river when each patrol in turn was taken on an excursion in Captain Andy's motor-boat. It was on such an occasion that Nixon Warren, who had begun his scout service as a member of the Peewit Patrol of Philadelphia, obtained his coveted chance of seeing Spotty Seal at close quarters. "You stay round Exmouth during the spring an' summer, Nix, and I'll take you where you'll see a seal close enough for you to shake his flipper," promised the sea-captain; and he kept his word, though the pledge was fulfilled after a fashion not in accordance with his intentions.