When Elmer Chenowith looked through that opening, what he saw was so entirely different from what he had anticipated discovering that he could hardly believe his eyes at first.

With all the fancy of a boy, who gives free rein to his imagination, doubtless he had fully expected to discover several gruff-looking hoboes gathered there, perhaps engaged in torturing one of their kind, or some wretched party who had fallen into their power.

Nothing of the sort. The very first object Elmer saw was a small boy, dressed in ragged clothes, and who was trying to blow a dying fire into life again.

This did not look very alarming; and so Elmer cast his eyes further afield, with the result that presently another moving object riveted his attention. Why, surely that must be a girl, for her long hair seemed to indicate as much! What was she bending over? Was that a rude cot?

Then the strange truth burst upon Elmer like a cannon shot. The groans—they must indicate that a sick person lay there, and these two small children (for the boy could not be over six, while the girl might be eight) were trying to carry out the combined duties of nurse, doctor and cook!

"Oh!"

It was Red himself who gave utterance to this low exclamation. He was peering in at the opening over the shoulder of Mr. Garrabrant, and what he saw was so vastly different from his expectations that he received a severe "jolt," as he himself afterwards expressed it.

Perhaps the sound, low as it was, reached the ears of the little girl guardian of the sick bed. They saw her give a jump, and immediately a pair of startled blue eyes were staring in the direction of the opening.

"Come!" said Mr. Garrabrant to his boys, "there is no need of any more secrecy. I think we are needed here, and badly, too."

He led the way around the corner of the lone lodge, with the scouts tagging at his heels, only too willing to follow. Reaching the door of the cabin they were about to enter, when Mr. Garrabrant uttered an exclamation of alarm.

"Get on to the girl, would you?" gasped Lil Artha; and there was no need of his attempting to explain, since his chums could see for themselves.

Small though she was, the girl had snatched up a long-barreled gun, and was now actually menacing the intruders. Her white face had a desperate look upon it, as though at some time in the past the child had been warned that there were bad men to be met with in those woods. As for the little chap, he had hold of the hatchet with which at the time he must have been cutting kindling wood; for he clutched it in his puny hand, and looked like a dwarfed wildcat at bay.

Elmer, as long as he lived, would never forget that picture. And as for the other boys, not one of them could so much as utter a single word.

"Hold on, my child!" cried Mr. Garrabrant, raising his hands to show that they did not hold any sort of weapon; "we are friends, and would be only too glad to be of help to you. One of us is something of a doctor, if it happens that anyone is sick here. Please let us come in."

Perhaps it was the kindly look of the handsome young scout master—then again his voice may have influenced the frightened girl; or the fact that those in the open doorway were mostly boys might have had considerable to do with it. Then again that magical word "doctor" must have thrilled her through and through.

The gun fell to the floor, and the relieved girl burst into a flood of tears.

"It's dad!" she cried, moving a hand toward the rude cot behind her; and as the eyes of the boys flitted thither again, they saw a bearded and very sick looking man trying to raise himself up on his elbow.

Mr. Garrabrant immediately went toward him, uttering reassuring words, that no doubt did much to relieve the alarm of the occupant of the rude bed. Wisely had the long-headed scout master caused one of the boys to carry some food along, not knowing what necessity might arise. He saw that hunger was holding sway in this lone cabin as well as sickness. And while Red started the fire to going, Ty Collins proceeded to unwrap the package of meat and bread, as well as the coffee and tea he had "toted" all the way from camp.

Mr. Garrabrant with a few questions learned the simple story. The man was a charcoal burner in the summer season, while he pursued the arduous labor of a lumberman in the winter. A few months before his wife had suddenly died, leaving him with these two small but very independent children.

Abe Morris, his name was, while the boy carried that of Felix; and whenever the cabin dweller spoke of the girl it was always as "Little Lou." He had hated to leave the retired home where he had spent so many pleasant years, and near which his wife was buried. And so he had managed to get along, with the girl cooking his meals and playing the part of housekeeper wonderfully well; while even Felix could do his stunt of gathering firewood and looking after a few simple traps in which he caught muskrats.

When the boys heard that this small edition of a lad had been able to actually outwit the shrewd animals of the marsh, they looked at each other in dismay, as though wondering whether he might not have a better right to the title of scout that any among them.

Things had gone fairly well with the widower until a week back, when an accident had brought him almost to death's door. Managing to drag himself home, he had swooned from loss of blood. Since that time he had suffered tortures, more of the mind than of the body, since he dreaded the thought of what would become of his children should death claim him.

They had done wonderfully well. When Dr. Ted got busy, he praised the simple but clever work of that eight-year-old girl, in binding up such a severe wound. Perhaps Little Lou may have learned how to do this from the mother who was gone, or it might be it came just natural to her. When children live away from the world, and are forced to depend upon themselves for everything, it is amazing how they can do things that would puzzle those twice their age, when pampered in comfortable homes. Necessity forces them to reach out and attempt things, just as she teaches the child to use its limbs, and utter sounds.

Once they realized that these were kind friends who had come so opportunely to their rescue, Felix and Little Lou found their voices, and proved that they could talk, as Lil Artha put it, "a blue streak."

And when they sat down to a supper such as they had not tasted for many a day, both of the children of the charcoal burner were comparatively happy. As for the man himself, he wrung the hands of Mr. Garrabrant and each of the Boy Scouts as they took their leave, calling down blessings on their heads for what they had done.

"We're going to see you through, Abe," the scout master had said positively. "We intend being up here ten days or so, and during that time I fully expect our Dr. Ted will be able to have you hobbling around again. Then you've got to come down to Hickory Ridge when we send a vehicle of some sort up here for you. This is no place for a man to think of bringing up two such fine youngsters as you possess. They must have a chance to go to school, and I promise you all the work you want, so that you can live in or near town. It may have been different so long as your good wife was with you, but now it would be next door to a crime to think of staying here, even for the balance of the summer. You will come, won't you?"

"Sure I will, Mr. Garrabrant!" exclaimed the rough man; who, however, used better language than might have been expected. "And it's the luckiest day of my whole life when those two lads discovered my shack here. Heaven only knows what would have become of us only for that."

They left the queer home in the wilderness with Felix and Little Lou waving their hands vigorously after them, standing in the doorway, and plainly seen against the firelight behind.

And there was not one among those boys but who felt a warm sensation in the region of his heart, such as always comes when a kind deed has been performed.

Mr. Garrabrant had been greatly affected by the incident; nor did he hesitate to express himself warmly on the journey back to the camp, which by the way Elmer managed to accomplish without even one error of judgment, much to the admiration of his chums, who watched his actions eagerly, desirous of picking up points calculated to enhance their reputation as scouts.

"Boys, you may have made other tramps, going skating, hunting, playing baseball, and the like; but take my word for it, you never acquitted yourselves better than on this night. I'm proud of every one of you, and I thank you in the name of poor Abe Morris. And if there happens to be anyone here who has been wearing his badge upside down through the day, because he failed to find a chance to do anybody a good turn, I hereby give him full permission to set it right."

"Hurrah! that touches me, sir!" exclaimed Jack Armitage. "I've been wondering all along just how in the wide world I was going to find a chance to do my little kind deed stunt. There ain't any old ladies to help across the street up here; and dooryards to clear up of trash are as scarce as hens' teeth. But you've eased my mind a heap, Mr. Garrabrant. Perhaps you'll let me do some of the running over to Abe's cabin each day, to carry him supplies. That sturdy little chap just took my eye, and when I get back home I'm going to get father to give Abe a job in his flooring mill."

"That's nice of you, Jack," replied the pleased scout master. "And it does your heart credit. Between us all, it will be very strange if we can't fix up that little family, and bring some happiness to their bleak home. Think of those two brave kiddies keeping house for their father amid such desolate surroundings. No wonder they made me think of a pair of wildcats ready to defend their den as we bustled in. They seldom see a living soul but their father, now that the mother has been laid away. But we must be nearly back at camp, I should judge, Elmer? At any rate, I admit that I'm beginning to feel leg weary, not being used to this work of tramping over the side of a rough mountain."

"But just think of Red, here, thir," broke in Dr. Ted, who had a helping arm around the lame member of the expedition. "He thure detherves a medal for what he's done. Tramping all thith distance with that thore ankle ith—well, I wath going to thay heroic, but I guess he wouldn't like that. Anyhow, I think pretty much all the credit ought to go to Red."

"Now, just you hold your horses there!" declared the party in question, trying to repress a groan, as he had a rude twinge of pain shoot up his left leg. "I owe all this to myself, and more, because I made the mistake of running off without finding out what that groan meant. I've wanted to kick myself ever since. It ain't often I play the part of a sneak, and it makes me sore. So whenever my leg hurts I just grin and say to myself: 'Serves you right, you coward, for running away, instead of investigating, like a true scout should have done!'"

"You are too severe on yourself, Oscar," remarked Mr. Garrabrant, soothingly; for he knew the impulsive and warm-hearted nature of the boy who was taking himself so much to task. "When your companion suggested that perhaps there was a case of smallpox in that hut, it was your duty to come to me and report, rather than take the awful responsibility on your young shoulders. And I mean to see to it that you get many good marks for what you have done this night—not you alone, but every boy who accompanied me on this errand of mercy."

"There's the camp fire, sir!" exclaimed Elmer, at this moment.

"I bet you Redth glad to see it, poor old chap!" remarked Dr. Ted.

"Shucks! I reckon I could have stood it a little while longer!" declared the limping one; but when he presently reached the home camp, and sank down on a blanket, the pain he had been silently enduring all the return trip was too much for him, and Red actually fainted.

Of course he was quickly brought to, and Dr. Ted looked to the injured limb.

"You'll have to lie around pretty much all the balance of the time we're run up in thith neck of the woodth, old fellow," was his announcement; which dictum made Red do what the pain had failed to accomplish, groan dismally.

Of course those who had been left behind were fairly clamorous to know what had happened. So sitting there by the crackling fire, with all those bright and eager faces surrounding him, the scout master, assisted at times by Elmer, Ted or Lil Artha, described their long jaunt over the grim mountainside, the finding of the lone cabin, just as Red and Larry had said, and what wonderful discovery they had made upon peering in through the open window.

And every boy felt that a golden opportunity had come to their organization that night to live up to the high ideals the Boy Scout movement stands for.