Young Knights of the Empire | Page 7

of wool, oil, and flour, which suggested that with a little more roasting the patient would have made a good pie!
I need scarcely add there was not much the matter with him except that he belonged to a patrol of Boy Scouts who were practising "first aid."
In the same troop another patrol were cooking a very savoury Irish stew, mixing dough on a haversack (which, I think, is quite as good as my way of doing it inside my coat!), and baking bread in an oven made out of an old biscuit tin, and roasting "twists" made on stakes planted near the fire. (For "Tenderfoots," anxious for details as to how these things are done, I recommend a study of the chapter on camp cooking in Scouting for Boys.)
The point about this cooking was that the food was being really well cooked, and fit for anyone to eat with enjoyment.
In the same troop signallers were at work sending and receiving messages. And also one of their horsemen was there to act as mounted dispatch rider, with a smart pony which he was able to saddle and look after as well as to ride. Nearly every Scout in this troop was a First Class Scout, of an average age of thirteen.
Two hundred yards from their little camp was another troop of younger Scouts, of about eleven years of age. All were busy cooking their teas at numerous little camp fires at the time when I saw them, and made a most picturesque scene.
Then a third troop had its camp in a different spot, where three patrols of boys of about fifteen years of age were collected. Fine, strapping, long-limbed types of Britons. It was a pleasure to see them going "Scout pace" across the grass, and a still greater pleasure when I found that they were as good Scouts as they looked. Nearly all were First Class Scouts. I was invited to hand out to them the Efficiency Badges they had been winning.
These included quite a number of First Class, Cyclists', Firemen's, Musicians', Electricians', Cooks', etc.
I had just said a few words to the troop of my pleasure at seeing them so smart and so efficient, when the alarm was given that the school buildings were on fire. A few brief words of command were given by the Scoutmaster, and each patrol streaked off in a different direction at a great pace. We hurried to the scene of the outbreak, and had just time to see (in our mind's eye only) dense clouds of smoke with tongues of flame and showers of sparks bursting from the doomed building, while the windows were alive with terrified women and screaming children--that is what we were picturing--when out came a knot of Scouts running the fire-hose into position, and joining it up from one part of the building, while from another there came a second patrol trundling along the great giraffe-like fire-escape. Within four minutes of the alarm the leading fireman was up on the ladder directing the nozzle of the hose-pipe with a strong jet of water on the windows of the (supposed) burning chamber.
It was all very smartly, quickly, and quietly carried out, and the patrols thoroughly deserved the Firemen's Badges which they had won.
Denstone College, where I saw all this, is one of the great schools which have taken up scouting as a sport and training for their boys; and the results, according to the masters who act as Scoutmasters, are most satisfactory.
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SCOUTS' GOOD TURNS.
Recently, all in the one day, I came across three cases of Scouts doing their duty.
One lady told me that when travelling in a crowded train she and her daughter were put into a carriage which was already crammed full of boys.
She did not like it a bit at first, but she soon found the difference between "Scouts" and "boys." These were "Scouts," and they at once helped the ladies and their baggage into the carriage, and then made plenty of room for them by sitting on each other's knees, and kept order and behaved so nicely that she fell in love with all of them, and talked with them and found them "quite charming and gentlemanly."
Another lady told me that some Scouts had asked leave to camp in her grounds, and as she has allowed boys to do this for some years past, she did not like to refuse them: at the same time she was not very glad to have them, because she had found it expensive and troublesome every year to have to get the camping-ground cleaned up and set right after they had gone.
The day after the Scouts had finished their camp, she sent as usual some men to work on the camp-ground, when to her astonishment, they came