“I’ve been thinking things over,” he declared. “I’ve got an idea. It isn’t the thing itself that bothers, but the consequences. Look here, now! Mother had promised to make two angel cakes--takes eleven eggs for each cake. And she’d promised one for the church supper, and Jennie was to have the other for her club. And now Mother has got to disappoint the supper committee, and they’d told her they set ’special store by her angel cake. And she’s hot! And Jennie--say, Sam, if you had a sister, you’d know the fix I’m in. Jennie’s just sizzling. So I’m keeping away from the house. Gee, I’d never go home if I could help myself!” Step waved a long and pitiful hand. “Company for dinner to-morrow!” he said simply. “I’m lying low myself.” Sam meditated briefly. Since that terrible moment on the ridge he had gone through half a dozen phases of emotion. He had ranged from terror to exultation. His plans had varied from full confession to absolute silence. Now he was disposed to follow a course of inaction, based on a belief that the man had not been badly hurt, and that perhaps nothing ever would be heard of the affair. Of course, if report should be made; or if it should prove that the wounds were serious; or if the victim should turn out to be a poor man unable to pay a doctor’s bill--well, he wouldn’t cross bridges till he came to them. And, meanwhile, he would try to bear himself as if nothing untoward had happened--and thank his lucky stars that he could keep his secret, even for a time. “Well, that was hard luck!” he said again, and put more heart in the speech. Poke returned to the blackboard. “Might as well learn a lesson when there’s a lesson to be learned,” he rumbled. “Struck me, too, we ought to post something here to remind us that it pays to keep out of trouble. I’d like to give the club a name that’d mean something--see? I can think of mottoes enough--‘Look before you leap, and then go ’round,’ and ‘You never can tell when it’s loaded,’ and a lot of others--but I’m stumped for a name. Now, if I----” There he broke off. Sam, elbowing him out of the way, stood before the board. For a second young Parker hesitated. Then he caught up a piece of chalk, and scrawled in big letters: _The Safety First Club_. Poke clapped his hands. “Jiminy! but that’s just the idea I was groping for. Prime, ain’t it, Step?” Step nodded gloomily. “Fa-fair,” he admitted. Sam laid down his chalk. He dusted his hands a trifle theatrically. “Like the name, do you?” said he. “Came to me all of a sudden.” “It’s a crackerjack!” declared Poke warmly. “Hits the nail right on the head. But that makes me think, Sam--where’s that deer you were going to hit? Haven’t got that haunch in your pocket, have you?” “No,” said Sam curtly. “Bet you didn’t see a deer!” “I--I didn’t.”