Into the post office of one of these places strode Scout Harris. He stamped his letter, dropped it through the slot, then having done his good turn he proceeded to turn his hat right side out, and his conscience was at rest. So it happened that two or three days later old Mrs. Haskell, in her tumbling-down white house, read the letter which her soldier boy had written her more than two years before. Little did she dream as she laid this reverently away with that blunt, harsh notification of his death, that a scout had taken off his hat to her as scouts do across all those miles and miles of country.... CHAPTER XVII A REVELATION As Pee-wee turned from the mail slot he saw Warde and Roy gazing at a very antiquated bulletin board such as one seldom sees elsewhere than in a country post office. These ancient bulletin boards bespeak the country as eloquently as do the hayfields. They seem never to be new. Articles lost but long since restored to their owners are still advertised on faded brittle paper, fastened by rusted thumb tacks of a bygone age. Strawberry festivals, with strawberries that have gone the way of all strawberries, are here announced. Auction sales and Red Cross drives long ended here proclaim themselves like ghosts out of the dead past. Letters waiting patiently for people whose names are on tombstones are here listed. Pee-wee pressed his way between Warde and Roy and gazed at a notice by no means new which, partly overlapped by later notices, had caught the eyes of his two friends: WANTED FOR MURDER FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD WILL BE PAID BY THE POLICE OF QUEBEC, CANADA, FOR INFORMATION LEADING TO THE ARREST AND CONVICTION OF CLAUDE DARRELL, ALIAS DARROW, ALIAS HICKEY JOE, ETC., ETC. WANTED FOR BURGLARY AND HOMICIDE. Was last seen in New York, where he tried to enlist for military service. Hair brown and straight. Complexion dark. Eyes gray. Height 5 feet 10-1/2 inches. Weight about 140 pounds. Teeth white and even. May seek work as gasfitter. When last seen wore a gray suit with double-breasted vest. Walks slightly sideways. But it was not the reading matter on this notice which riveted the attention of the scouts and for a few moments held them speechless. Two pictures, one a front face, the other a profile, were there shown. "What--" Pee-wee began, anxiously, hesitatingly, as if he dared not say what was in his mind. "Yep," said Warde, with a kind of cold resolve, as if one of them must express their common thought; "it's him--it's Blythe."