The Boy Patrol on Guard — Edward S. Ellis / Edward Sylvester Ellis

One bright sunshiny day in the summer of 1912, a boy some seventeen years old awoke to the fact that he had lost his way in the depth of the woods of southern Maine. He was a sturdy Irish youth, with red hair, freckled face, a fine set of teeth, an exhaustless fund of good nature, humor and wit, of pugnacious temperament, like so many of his people, but so truthful and chivalrous that every one with whom he came in contact speedily grew to like him. Now, if you have idled your time in reading my “Launch Boys” stories, you will recall this lad, Mike Murphy by name, for they gave a pretty full record of his adventures on the Kennebec and along its shores. In order to make clear the incidents that follow I must add a few words of explanation.