“I want you to be near your mother and myself just now, especially, Harry,” he had said.  “I want you to grow up where I can see you.  And, more-over, it won’t hurt you a bit to know something about other countries.  You’ll have a new idea of America when you have seen other lands, and I believe you’ll be a better American for it.  You’ll learn that other countries have their virtues, and that we can learn some things from them.  But I believe you’ll learn, too, to love America better than ever.  When we go home you’ll be broader and better for your experience.”

And Harry was finding out that his father had been right.  At first he had to put up with a good deal.  He found that the English boys he met in school felt themselves a little superior.  They didn’t look down on him, exactly, but they were, perhaps the least bit sorry for him because he was not an Englishman, always a real misfortune in their sight.

He had resented that at first.  But his Boy Scout training stood him in good stead.  He kept his temper, and it was not long before he began to make friends.  He excelled at games; even the English games that were new and strange to him presented few difficulties to him.  As he had explained to Dick, cricket was easy for any boy who could play baseball fairly well.  And it was the same way with football.  After the far more strenuous American game, he shone at the milder English football, the Rugby game, which is the direct ancestor of the sport in America.

All these things helped to make Harry popular.  He was now nearly sixteen, tall and strong for his age, thanks to the outdoor life he had always lived.  An only son, he and his father had always been good friends.  Without being in any way a molly-coddle, still he had been kept safe from a good many of the temptations that beset some boys by the constant association with his father.  It was no wonder, therefore, that John Grenfel, as soon as he had talked with Harry and learned of the credentials he bore from his home troop, had welcomed him enthusiastically as a recruit to his own troop.

It had been necessary to modify certain rules.  Harry, of course, could not subscribe to quite the same scout oath that bound his English fellows.  But he had taken his scout oath as a tenderfoot at home, and Grenfel had no doubts about him.  He was the sort of boy the organization wanted, whether in England or America, and that was enough for Grenfel.

Though the boys, as they walked toward their homes, did not quite realize it, they were living in days that were big with fate.  Far away, in the chancelleries of Europe, and, not so far away, in the big government buildings in the West End of London, the statesmen were even then making their best effort to avert war.  No one in England, perhaps, really believed that war was coming.  There had been war scares before.  But the peace of Europe had been preserved for forty years or more, through one crisis after another.  And so it was a stunning surprise, even to Grenfel, when, as they came into Putney High street, just before they reached Putney Bridge, they met a swam of newsboys excitedly shrieking extras.