Edward Howard Griggs

A Boy Scout's Courage Edward Howard Griggs

"As long as I can't be at home, I'd rather be here than anywhere in the world I can think of!" Was it little more than a week, thought Harry Fleming, American Boy Scout living in London, since he had uttered those words so lightly? Was it just a week since Grenfel, his English scoutmaster, had bidden the boys good-bye? Was it just two days since father and mother had been so suddenly recalled to the States? Was it just that very morning that he and his good chum Dick Mercer had been detailed on this mission which had led to the discovery of the secret heliographs so busily sending messages to the enemy across the North Sea? Was it just a few hours since the two Scouts, hot on the trail, had cached papers and motorcycles and started the closer exploration of that mysterious estate outside the sleepy English village, leased, so the village gossip had it, by a rich American who eccentrically denied himself to all comers and zealously guarded the privacy of his grounds? Was it just a few moments since he had urged, even commanded Dick Mercer to leave him, caught in a trap set for just such trespassers as they? Had he urged his chum to leave him in his agony, for the ankle was badly wrenched, and seek safety in flight? For it was Harry Fleming, hero of "A Boy Scout's Daring," whom we now find listening in an agony of fear rather than of pain to such sounds as came to him after Dick had, so reluctantly, left him pinned in the trap. He could hear, plainly enough, the advance of the two searchers who had scared Dick into hiding in the rhododendron bush; he could even see the gleam of their flashlights, and was able, therefore, to guess what they were doing. For the moment it seemed impossible to him that Dick should escape.