it, evidently, after all. His headache was a bilious attack. Your aunt writes that he will travel to-morrow. I shall have to wire to put him off, of course, but it's just possible that he may escape altogether." 

 "I say, if he does, what a time he'll have! No Dick; no us; no holiday; no nothing!" said Peter commiseratingly.  "Poor chap, he's worse off than us." 

 "Yes, indeed," Mrs. Vaughan smiled.  "In fact you three look as though you were enjoying yourselves. How is the camp prospering, Robin, and how did you all sleep?" 

 "Jolly well."  They were unanimous.  "I saw your light, Mother," added Jan, "in the window." 

 "My light, dear!"  Mrs. Vaughan looked surprised; "my room looks out on the other side. I put out no lamp," she added when Jan had told her story; "you must have been mistaken." 

 "Quite mysterious," said Peter teasingly. 

 "Something else happened that seemed a bit mysterious at the time, didn't it, old chap?" said Robin, paying off Jan's score.  "What about the noise at midnight?" 

 "Why, I'd forgotten all about it. So there was!"  Peter broke into his story, and the experience lost nothing in the telling: "Bang, bang! Thump, thump! Ting, ting! it went," quoth he, "right through my head." 

 His mother laughed.  "The effect of the late supper, my dear; probably both mysteries come from the same cause. Well, I must go. Robin, remember you're in charge." 

 "All right, Mother, but everything's going spiffingly, really," her eldest son assured her. 

 The day was a busy one. First of all, the camp had to be cleared as the Captain commanded. Then came the making of the day's arrangements, and the procuring of supplies. Potatoes could be bought from a neighbouring farm; eggs also; butter and bread and tea from the village shop over the river. Jan was anxious to try her hand at a stew, and the meat for this had to be procured. Mrs. Brown's chores had to be put in hand too; old Brown was away early and the boys were anxious, as Scouts, to do as many good turns as they could for the kind old dame in return for her good services to them. Her wood was collected, and her kindling was chopped; her stores were brought in from the neighbouring shop; half-an-hour's work was put in on mending up the fence of her little garden.  "And we'll have a go at earthing up 

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