Before he finally arrested him, "Jimmie" Sniffen had seen the man with the golf-cap, and the blue eyes that laughed at you, three times.Twice, unexpectedly, he had come upon him in a wood road and once on Round Hill where the stranger was pretending to watch the sunset.Jimmie knew people do not climb hills merely to look at sunsets, so he was not deceived.He guessed the man was a German spy seeking gun sites, and secretly vowed to "stalk" him.
From that moment, had the stranger known it, he was as good as dead.For a boy scout with badges on his sleeve for "stalking"and "path-finding," not to boast of others for "gardening" and "cooking," can outwit any spy.Even had, General Baden-Powell remained in Mafeking and not invented the boy scout, Jimmie Sniffen would have been one.Because, by birth he was a boy, and by inheritance, a scout.In Westchester County the Sniffens are one of the county families.If it isn't a Sarles, it's a Sniffen;and with Brundages, Platts, and Jays, the Sniffens date back to when the acres of the first Charles Ferris ran from the Boston post road to the coach road to Albany, and when the first Gouverneur Morris stood on one of his hills and saw the Indian canoes in the Hudson and in the Sound and rejoiced that all the land between belonged to him.
If you do not believe in heredity, the fact that Jimmie's great-great-grandfather was a scout for General Washington and hunted deer, and even bear, over exactly the same hills where Jimmie hunted weasles will count for nothing.It will not explain why to Jimmie, from Tarrytown to Port Chester, the hills, the roads, the woods, and the cow-paths, caves, streams, and springs hidden in the woods were as familiar as his own kitchen garden, Nor explain why, when you could not see a Pease and Elliman "For Sale" sign nailed to a tree, Jimmie could see in the highest branches a last year's bird's nest.
Or why, when he was out alone playing Indians and had sunk his scout's axe into a fallen log and then scalped the log, he felt that once before in those same woods he had trailed that same Indian, and with his own tomahawk split open his skull.Sometimes when he knelt to drink at a secret spring in the forest, the autumn leaves would crackle and he would raise his eyes fearing to see a panther facing him.
But there ain't no panthers in Westchester," Jimmie would reassure himself.And in the distance the roar of an automobile climbing a hill with the muffler open would seem to suggest he was right.But still Jimmie remembered once before he had knelt at that same spring, and that when he raised his eyes he had faced a crouching panther."Mebbe dad told me it happened to grandpop," Jimmie would explain, "or I dreamed it, or, mebbe, Iread it in a story book."
The "German spy" mania attacked Round Hill after the visit to the boy scouts of Clavering Gould, the war correspondent.He was spending the week end with "Squire" Harry Van Vorst, and as young Van Vorst, besides being a justice of the peace and a Master of Beagles and President of the Country Club, was also a local "councilman" for the Round Hill Scouts, he brought his guest to a camp-fire meeting to talk to them.In deference to his audience, Gould told them of the boy scouts he had seen in Belgium and of the part they were playing in the great war.It was his peroration that made trouble.
"And any day," he assured his audience, "this country may be at war with Germany; and every one of you boys will be expected to do his bit.You can begin now.When the Germans land it will be near New Haven, or New Bedford.They will first capture the munition works at Springfield, Hartford, and Watervliet so as to make sure of their ammunition, and then they will start for New York City.They will follow the New Haven and New York Central railroads, and march straight through this village.I haven't the least doubt," exclaimed the enthusiastic war prophet, "that at this moment German spies are as thick in Westchester as blackberries.They are here to select camp sites and gun positions, to find out which of these hills enfilade the others and to learn to what extent their armies can live on the country.
They are counting the cows, the horses, the barns where fodder is stored; and they are marking down on their maps the wells and streams."As though at that moment a German spy might be crouching behind the door, Mr.Gould spoke in a whisper."Keep your eyes open!" he commanded."Watch every stranger.If he acts suspiciously, get word quick to your sheriff, or to Judge Van Vorst here.Remember the scouts' motto, 'Be prepared!'"That night as the scouts walked home, behind each wall and hayrick they saw spiked helmets.
Young Van Vorst was extremely annoyed.