'What shall we call our patrol?' asked George Lee, one of the successful boys in passing the tests, as they walked home. 'I vote for Wolf!' cried Dick--'the Wolf Patrol! That sounds jolly, I think.' 'Yes, we'll have that--the Wolf,' said Arthur Graydon. 'We must wait a little,' said Mr. Elliott, 'and see if any other patrols have been formed in Bardon. It won't do to clash, but I'll see about that.' Mr. Elliott made inquiries, and found that though there was some talk of forming patrols here and there, yet not one was actually in existence in the neighbourhood. So Dick and his friends became 1st Bardon Troop, Wolf Patrol, and were very proud of that fact. The Wolf Patrol now turned to with a will to convert themselves from second-class scouts into first-class. Arthur Graydon was chosen patrol leader, and Dick Elliott was the corporal. Whenever the Wolves met each other they gave the scouts' salute with great care, the rank and file receiving the secret sign in half-salute, while Arthur Graydon, as patrol-leader, was greeted with the full salute. Their pocket-money went like water for patrol flags, badges, crests, and tracking-irons, and every boy rigged himself up with khaki shorts and a khaki hat with broad brim, in proper scouts' style. Above all, they practised without ceasing the wolf's howl, which was the secret call of their patrol. Several of the Wolf Patrol lived quite near to each other, and at night they would go into their gardens, and scout would howl to scout in such mournful, long-drawn notes that peaceful, elderly gentlemen, reading the evening paper after dinner, rushed out to see if murder was being done somewhere. CHAPTER III CHIPPY HEARS OF NEW THINGS One Saturday afternoon Chippy, the leader of the wharf-rats of Skinner's Hole, was crossing the heath on his way home. He had been with a message to a village some three miles from Bardon, and was taking a short cut over the heath, which he knew from side to side and corner to corner. Suddenly he stopped. He had heard a strange noise--a sound as of chanting or singing--and he wondered where it came from. In a moment he had fixed the place. 'That's in the old sand-'ole,' he muttered to himself, and he shuffled across the heath in his big, clumsy, hob-nailed boots towards the spot. In a couple of minutes he had wormed his way between two gorse-bushes growing at the edge of the deep hollow, and was looking with much interest at the sight beneath him. It was the Wolf Patrol practising the scouts' war-dance. The old deserted sandpit made a splendid place for their patrol meetings for open-air work. They had come there that afternoon for practice in Test 12--fire-laying and lighting, and cooking flour and potatoes without utensils. But, first of all, they were practising the war-dance. The strange words of the Scouts' Song floated up to Chippy's ears, but he could make nothing of them: 'Ingonyama--gonyama Invooboo Yah bobo! Yah bobo! Invooboo.