Every now and then the sham young scout halted, peering backward, for it was going to be of prime importance to him to know how to get back when his scouting trip was done. "Halt! Who's there?" Overton did halt, flattening himself down against the rock. The hail, though softly spoken, had been unmistakable. "Halt! Who's there?" "You'll have to come here and find out," thought Overton. Then, as silence followed, Hal, holding his very breath, crawled some ten yards to the left. Again he halted, but this time there was no faintly spoken challenge. "I think I know where that fellow is," mused Hal. "Is he a lone sentry, or part of an outpost?" It required fifteen minutes now of the most cautious procedure, but Private Overton at last found himself hugging the ground at a point from which he could just barely discern the dimly defined figure of an alert sentry against the skyline. "I've got him between our camp and myself now," thought Hal swiftly. "Now I've got to be doubly careful. I don't care to have B Company laughing at me because I got captured while on scouting duty. But I'll settle the question of whether that sentry is alone, or part of an outpost." Three minutes later, after some most careful manoeuvring, Overton had solved the question. His grinning face was turned toward a corporal and two men who lay rolled in their blankets some ten yards behind the sentry. "It's an outpost, all right," grinned Hal. "Whee! How I would like to bag the outpost and take them in as prisoners." But that was out of the question--not to be thought of. Private Hal Overton found himself seized by a spirit of mischief. It was the same type of impulse which, carried to the point of reckless daring in real warfare, leads men on to swift promotion. Almost before he realized what he was doing Hal had hidden his own rifle and was crawling stealthily toward the sleeping men. Beside the corporal lay his rifle. Barely breathing, his body flattened against the ground. Hal crept closer and closer, then stealthily withdrew the rifle. A moment or two later Hal had the captured rifle lying on the ground beside his own. "That's a real find to take back to camp," laughed Hal silently. He was about to make off with the captured piece when a new impulse seized him. "Why not go back after more loot?" he asked himself, grinning. "Jupiter, I'll do it!" Every such move as this was fraught with added danger. But Hal moved on his stomach, taking plenty of time, always with his watchful eyes on the dim figure of the sentry a few yards away. That soldier, however, appeared to be peering mostly in the direction where he believed the camp of B Company to lie. After a short time Hal, back in safety again, gloated over the sight of three rifles beside his own. "I'll be a hog, if I don't look out!" chuckled the young scout of sham warfare.