“Let me see.  Oh, yes.  ‘Will you do something for me?’” she continued reading. “’If you have any little book of your rules and plans, and if you will leave one in the hollow stone for me, some day I will repay you for your confidence.

“’Your victim, “‘The man by the tree.’”

“Oh, what can he want a scout book for?” eagerly asked Grace, folding the letter.

“We couldn’t give it, without permission—­unless, it would be too bad to give away our secret to get permission,” pouted Grace.

“We might get permission without telling all about it,” suggested Cleo adroitly.  “We could say we wanted to influence a stranger, and besides, anyone can buy a manual in the stores.”

“Of course,” decided Madaline, happy that the secret would not be spoiled.  “Perhaps he wants—­”

“To be a scout!” roared Grace in one of her gales of laughter.  “Wouldn’t it be too funny if he were to fall in love with Captain Clark!”

“And marry her!” topped off Cleo.

“Then your noble deed, Grace, would be noble indeed,” added Madaline.

“I guess Miss Clark can marry whom she pleases.  She’s very pretty.”

“And her dad is rich too, so I don’t believe we can solve our mystery that way,” finished Cleo, and none of the three had quite decided just how she would like to end it when the five o’clock bell from the “Home” out Clinton way chimed a warning hour.

“So late!” exclaimed Grace, “and I have to practice before tea.”

“And I have to help mother, for Martha’s out,” added Madaline.

“Let’s run,” suggested Cleo, and those who happened to see the trio scampering along never could have guessed they guarded so carefully the mystery of the woodsman’s letter.

CHAPTER XV

VENTURE TROOP

The girls of Franklin Mills were finally organized and began work just as Molly Cosgrove had planned.  Venture Troop immediately became a band of active, enthusiastic and withal capable girls, bringing to the scout movement a new vigor and promise, the result of individual self-discipline and the indispensible power of personal responsibility.

It must be understood here that girls employed in factories may lack social education, but they are always more self-reliant, more capable of handling emergencies and difficulties, and more surely skilled in precision and mechanical accuracy than are the girls of same age situated in the more fortunate walks of life, the difference in comparison being always in favor of normal conditions, and general education, because of the balance and mental ability acquired through our modern schools and progressive methods.