The afternoon passed almost before they realized it; and more than a few
declared that the sun must have dropped like a plummet, when they found
twilight creeping upon the forest.

Both Ted and Ward had long since gone away, as though disgusted. They had
tried to sneer at the work of Stanhope Troop No. 1; but every one knew
this humor was assumed; and that secretly they were eating their very
hearts out for envy.

No doubt there would be a hot time among their followers, when the
leaders endeavored to drive them to beat the record Wallace Carberry
had set in his fire starting, and water-boiling test.

"Suppose you come to supper with me, Paul," suggested Jack, when they
were more than half way back to town, with the double column moving along
like clockwork, every right leg thrust out in unison, as though forming a
part of a well-regulated machine.

Paul looked quickly at him when Jack said this.

"Oh! I can see through a millstone, when it has a hole in it," he
remarked.

"Which is one way of saying that you can guess I have a motive in asking
you?" returned the other, smiling queerly; "well, I have, in fact,
several. In the first place my mother told me to ask you. I rather think
she wants to pump you about that affair last night. Father wouldn't tell
her all she wished to know. Then again I'm still all broken up about
those lost coins; and I thought perhaps you might have guessed the answer
to the riddle."