“Hooray, hooray, hooray!  Hooray for High Peak!  Hooray for Marion Stanlock!  Hooray for Flamingo Camp Fire.”

The cheers, shrill on the sharp winter air, now in unison, now in confusion, came not from the assembled Camp Fire Girls, although from nearly as many voices.  Out from the timber thicket to the west of the campus rushed a small army of khaki-clad figures.  There were a few screams among the girls, but not many.  To be sure, everybody was thrilled, but nobody fainted.  There were a few moments of suspense, followed by bursts of laughter and applause from the girls.

“It’s the Spring Lake Boy Scouts,” cried Marion Stanlock, who was first to announce an explanation of the surprise.  “Clifford, Clifford Long, are you responsible for this?”

The Boy Scout patrol leader thus addressed did not reply, though he recognized the challenge with a wave of his hand.

He was busy bringing his patrol in matching line with the other patrols.  As if realizing their purpose, the circle around the camp fire was broken at a point nearest the newly arrived invaders, and an avenue of approach was formed by the lining up of some of the girls in two rows extended out towards the Boy Scouts.  In double file a hundred and fifty boys marched in and around the campfire; then faced toward the outer ring of Camp Fire Girls and bowed acknowledgment of the courteous reception.

* * * * *

CHAPTER II.

The boy scouts’ invasion.

That was a grand surprise that the Boy Scouts of Spring Lake academy “put over” on the Camp Fire Girls of Hiawatha Institute.  They had been planning it for several weeks, or since they first received information of the Grand Council Fire as a closing event of the first semester of the girls’ school.  The two institutions were located in municipalities only fifteen miles apart, connected by both steam railroad and electric interurban lines.

Spring Lake academy, located on a lake of the same name at the southern outskirt of Kingston, was originally a boys’ military school, and it still retained that primal distinction.  But the success of Hiawatha Institute as a Camp Fire Girls’ school set the imaginative minds of some of the leaders of the boys at Spring Lake to work along similar lines, with the result that the faculty’s cooperation was petitioned for the organization of the student body into a troop of Boy Scout patrols.  The scheme was successful, and as it served to inject new life into the academy, the business end of the institution had no ground for complaint.

This innovation at Spring Lake was due largely to the activities of Clifford Long, one of the students.  He was a cousin of Marion Stanlock, and naturally this relationship served to direct his personal interest toward Hiawatha Institute.  Not a few other students in these two schools were similarly related, some of them being brothers and sisters.