The Hickory Ridge troop had passed the experimental stage of progress, and had become an established fact. Three patrols, of eight boys each, were complete, and there were candidates to start a fourth, if they could meet the requirements and feel capable of subscribing to the twelve cardinal principles that every true scout has to try to live up to. Lately a rival troop had sprung up in Fairfield, led by one Matt Tubbs. Formerly Matt had only been known as a great bully, and those who trained with him had served under his banner simply through fear, without a grain of respect. But Matt had, strange to say, seen a great light. He had watched the boys of the khaki troop in their open-air tests. Something in the business seemed to appeal strongly to him; and then had come the determination to start a troop in his town. Of course he ran up against a snag in the beginning, for no boy with the loose principles Matt held at that time could ever be accepted as a scout. He studied the matter, watched the Hickory Ridge lads some more, and then came the great awakening. And now Matt Tubbs was on the right road. He controlled his followers just as thoroughly as before, but generally in a different manner. They respected him too. Still, once in a while the old spirit cropped out; and it was told how, when one of his cronies, thinking to take advantage of this new mantle of meekness, boldly challenged Matt to a fight, the new leader of the Fairfield troop gave him the best kind of a whipping; after which he helped bind up his scratches, and stop the flow of blood from his nose. But the insurrection had been nipped in the bud: and they did say that Matt tried to atone for his breaking of the rules of the organization by being unusually patient with those under him who had difficulty in keeping up with the reform pace he set. It was pretty generally understood all through the region that Matt Tubbs might never have started to climb the ladder only for the boyish sympathy which he received from Elmer Chenowith, the leader of the Hickory Ridge troop, and assistant to the scout master, Mr. Garrabrant. And the reformation of the worst boy in Fairfield and Cramertown long astonished the good people of those communities. When they awakened to the truth that it was no myth, but apparently an accomplished fact, they were quick to give most of the credit to the discipline of the new organization. And the Fairfield troop from that time on had never lacked for backing from the parents of those boys connected with the same. The fellows in the apple tree had been talking about these things as they helped Landy pick the fruit, a task that had been set for him by his father, and which must be fulfilled ere he could get off for play that day. Of course they also discussed the great baseball game that had recently been played between the rival troops, in which Hickory Ridge came out victor, after a very strenuous afternoon's work.