Once the boys had entered the barn, Bluff secured the door, after which a match was quickly lighted.

“Now, here we are, safe and sound, and not an enemy around.  Suppose you open up, Paul, and get this load off our minds,” said Albert Cypher, who seldom heard his own name among his friends, but was known far and wide as Nuthin’.

But what else could a lad expect who was so unfortunate as to find himself afflicted with such a name as A. Cypher?

“Yes, what’s it all mean, Paul?  You haven’t even taken me in, you know, and I’m as much in the dark as the next fellow,” remarked Jack Stormways, reproachfully; for being Paul’s closest chum he might have expected to share his confidence.

“Wait a bit.  We might as well make ourselves comfortable while we’re about it.  I’ll sit down on this box, and the rest of you gather around on the floor.  I’ve got a big proposition to make, and you want to listen carefully.”

“T-t-take c-c-care of the lantern, f-f-fellows; my d-d-dad’s w-w-wanting this old barn f-f-for his t-t-tobacco crop, and he’d b-b-be some put out if it b-b-burned just now!” came from Bluff.

Finding perches on various low piles of waste left over after the shipment of the last crop, the six lads gathered around Paul, eagerness stamped on every beaming face.

“Now, what’s the idea that struck you this time, Paul?” demanded Bobolink.

“I’ll tell you without any beating around the bush, fellows.  The thought came to me that Stanhope was away behind the times.  Other towns not nearly so big, have one or more troops of Boy Scouts.  Why shouldn’t we get up one here?” and Paul waited to hear what the response would be.

The six who sat in a ring looked at each other as though stunned by the proposal.  It was strange, indeed, that no one had up to this time taken a lead in advancing such a thing.

“Bully idea, Paul!” ejaculated Jack, slapping a hand on his knee enthusiastically, as though it appealed to him most decidedly.

“Well, I declare, to think that nobody ever mentioned such a grand movement before.  Count me in right from the start!” said Wallace Carberry—­sober Wallace, who usually measured his words as though they were golden.

“And me too,” observed Bobolink.

“Ditto for William!” called out the other Carberry Twin, grinning with delight.

“G-g-guess I’d make a bully good t-t-tenderfoot!”

“That’s the best thing you ever thought up, old chap,” came from Nuthin’.

“Hurrah! every county heard from, and not one contrary word.  It looks as if there might be something doing right soon around this region,” declared Paul, naturally pleased because his proposition had met with such unanimous satisfaction.

“Tell us more about it, please.  I’ve read about the Boy Scouts; but my mother would take a fit if she thought I was practicing to become a soldier.  You see, I had an older brother, who enlisted to go out with some of the boys when we had our little fuss about Cuba and the Philippines; and poor Frank died in camp of typhoid fever.  I’ll have a hard time winning her over, and the dad, too,” remarked Bobolink, sadly.