“See if you can find anything else,” suggested the judge, but a careful search about the office failed to reveal any more clues, and the boys finally went off to see, as Jack expressed it, what they could pick up on the outside.

“Come in again, Jack,” said the judge when the boys were leaving, “always glad to see you.  You have cleared up part of the mystery, anyhow.  You are so much better a detective than we are,” he added laughingly, “that I don’t know but what we shall have to put the case in your hands.”

“Oh, it wasn’t anything, judge,” responded Jack, “just putting two and two together.”

CHAPTER XI

FORMING THE PATROL

“Don’t you think,” began Pepper.

“Why not, Pepper?” asked Rand.

“What objection is there to our thinking?”

The four boys were, a couple of days later, on their way back to the town from the river, where they had been for an early morning swim.

“None whatever,” retorted Pepper, “if you were capable of doing it.”

“Now listen to that!” cried Rand.  “Pepper thinks he’s the only one that can think.  If you have got any thinks in your think-tank open the valve and let some of them escape.”

“One at a time, Pepper,” added Donald; “make it easy for us.”

“All through your interruptions?” asked Pepper; “because, if you are, I’ll elucidate.”

“Ah, what’s that?” cried Rand, “you’ll do what?  How do you spell it?”

“Elucidate—­explain—­make dear,” replied Pepper.  “Do I make myself comprehensible?”

“Another one,” groaned Rand.  “Say, Pepper, skip the hard ones, and tell us what’s troubling you.”

“What I was going to say,” went on Pepper, “was, don’t you think—­now don’t interrupt—­that it would be a good idea to have Gerald Moore and Dick Wilson meet with us to have a talk about the Scout business?”

“Seems as if it might be,” admitted Donald.

“What made you think of having Gerald join us, Jack?” asked Rand.  “I suppose you had some good reason.”

“Well, I hardly know,” responded Jack.  “It just came into my head while the colonel was talking the other day.  He’s an all-around good fellow, you know, even if he does not have much money.  Full of fun, and you can depend upon him every time.”

“That’s reason enough,” agreed Rand.  “I don’t know much about him, except that he was in our class at school, and I’m afraid I have had a little grudge against him.”

“What for?” cried Pepper.

“I guess it was because he made me work so hard to keep up with him in the class,” responded Rand laughingly.  “It was all I could do, too.”

“Dick’s a jolly good fellow, too,” put in Pepper.

“For he’s a jolly good fellow, for he’s a jolly good fellow, for he’s a jolly good fellow,” sang Jack, whereupon they ail joined in the refrain.