Wireless Patrol to help furnish our headquarters. I'm going to add the
eight dollars bounty money to the club fund for wireless equipment."

Then came a long pause. Finally this message came back to Charley. "The
Wireless Patrol thanks you, Charley, but we want you to sell the skin and
use the money and the bounty to pay for the field-glasses you need."

Charley turned away from his instrument with a suspicious moisture in his
eyes. It touched him deeply that his fellows were so solicitous concerning
his welfare and success. He did not realize that he was merely reaping the
reward of his own kindly good nature, that had made him a general favorite
with the boys of the Wireless Patrol.

There were no further alarms that night. Early in the morning the ranger
started back to his office, taking with him the letter to Lew. Charley
accompanied him part of the way. Then he continued on his patrol.

The next time Charley met the forester he received Lew's answer to his
letter. Lew had addressed the box, but several of the boys of the Wireless
Patrol had helped to pack it. The piece of green pasteboard proved to be
from a box in which Henry had gotten shoes by mail. The box came from
Carson and Derby, a big New York mail-order concern. Almost everybody in
the country around Central City bought articles from mail-order houses, so
Lew's letter threw no light on the problem. There might be a green
pasteboard box of that particular pattern in every farmhouse in the
county. Yet as Charley thought the matter over, he recalled that almost
everybody he knew who shopped by mail traded with Slears and Hoebuck, of
Chicago.

The days passed. Little happened to vary the monotony. Yet the sameness of