Chapter 3

CHAPTER XIVHERVEY’S TRIUMPH

As soon as Hervey’s dismay subsided he approached the log, and as he did so the figure appeared familiar to him. There was something especially familiar in the scout hat which came down over the ears of the little fellow who was underneath it, and in the hair which straggled out under the brim. The belt, drawn absurdly tight around the thin little waist, was a quite sufficient mark of identification. It was Skinny McCord, the latest find, and official mascot of the Bridgeboro troop, one of the crack troop of the camp. Alfred was his Christian name.

The queer little fellow’s usually pale face looked ghastly white in the late dusk, and the strange brightness of his eyes, and his spindle legs anddiminutive body, crowned by the hat at least two sizes too large, made him seem a very elf of the woods. At camp or elsewhere, Skinny was always alone, but he seemed more lonely than ever in that still wood, with the night coming on. Nature was so big and Skinny was so little.

“Hello, Skinny, old top!” Hervey said cheerily. “What do you think you’re doing here? Lost, strayed, or stolen?”

Skinny’s eyes were bright with a strange light; he seemed not to hear his questioner. But Hervey, knowing the little fellow’s queerness, was not surprised.

“You look kind of frightened. Are you lost?” Hervey inquired.

For just a moment Skinny stared at him with a look so intense that Hervey was startled. The little fellow’s fingers which clutched a branch of the log, trembled visibly. He seemed like one possessed.

“Don’t get rattled, Skinny,” Hervey said; “I’ll take you back to camp. We’ll find the way, all right-o.”

“I’m a second-class scout,” Skinny said.

“Bully for you, Skinny.”

“I—I just did it. I’m going to do more so as to be sure. Will you stay with me so you can tell them? Because maybe they won’t believe me.”

“They’ll believe you, Skinny, or I’ll break their heads, one after another. What did you do, Alf, old boy?”

“Maybe they’ll say I’m lying.”

“Not while I’m around,” Hervey said. “What’s on your mind, Skinny?”

“I ain’t through yet,” Skinny said. “I know your name and I like you. I like you because you can dive fancy.”

“Yes, and what are you doing here, Alf?” Hervey asked, sitting down beside the little fellow.

“I’m a second-class scout,” Skinny said; “I found the tracks and I tracked them. See them? There they are. Those are tracks.”

“Yes, I see them.”

“I tracked them all the way up from camp and I’ve got to go further up yet, so as to be sure. You got to besure—or you don’t get the badge. So now I won’t be a tenderfoot any more. Are you a second-class scout?”

“First-class, Skinny.”

“I bet you don’t care about tracks—do you?”

Hervey put his arm over the little fellow’s shoulder and as he did so he felt the little body trembling with nervous excitement.

“Not so much, Skinny. No, I don’t care about tracks. I—eh—I like diving better. How far up are you going to follow the tracks?”

“I’m going to follow them away, way, way up so as I’ll besure. They might say it wasn’t a half a mile, hey?”

The hand which rested on the little thin shoulder, patted it reassuringly.

“Well, I’ll be there to tell them different, won’t I, Skinny, old boy?”

“Will you go with me all the way up to where the mountain begins—will you?”

“Surest thing you know.”

“And will you prove it for me?”

“That’s me.”

“Then I won’t be a tenderfoot any more. I’ll be a second-class scout.”

“Is that what you have to do to be a second-class scout, Skinny? I forget about the second-class tests. You have to track an animal, or something like that? I’ve got a rotten memory.”

“And I’ll—I’ll have a trail named after me, too; it’ll be called McCord trail. These aremytracks, see? Because I found them. Only maybe they’ll say I’m lying. Anyway, how didyouhappen to come here?” he asked as if in sudden fear.

“I was just taking a walk through the woods, Skinny.”

Skinny continued to stare at him, still with a kind of lingering misgiving, but feeling that gentle patting on his shoulder, he seemed reassured.

“I was just flopping around in the woods, Skinny; just flopping around, that’s all....”

CHAPTER XVSKINNY’S TRIUMPH

And that was the triumph of Hervey Willetts, who would let nothing stand in his way. “Nothing!”

A hundred yards or so more and the stalking badge would have been won, and with it the Eagle award. The bicycle that he had longed for would have been his. The troop which in its confidence had commissioned him to win this high honor would have gone wild with joy. Hervey Willetts would have been the only Eagle Scout at Temple Camp save Tom Slade, and, of course, Tom didn’t count.

Yet, strangely enough, the only eagle that Hervey Willetts thought of now was the eagle which he had driven off—the bird of prey. To have killed little Skinny’s hope and dispelled his almostinsane joy would have made Hervey Willetts feel just like that eagle which had aroused his wrath and reckless courage. “Not for mine,” he muttered to himself. “Slady was right when he said he wasn’t so stuck on eagles. He’s a queer kind of a duck, Slady is; a kind of a mind reader. You never know just what he means or what he’s thinking about. I can’t make that fellow out at all.... I wonder what he meant when he said that a trail sometimes doesn’t come out where you think it’s going to come out....”

Hervey had greatly admired Tom Slade, but he stood in awe of him now. “Well, anyway,” said he to himself, “he said I’d win the award and I didn’t; so I put one over on him.” To put one over on Tom Slade was of itself something of a triumph. “He’s notalwaysright, anyway,” Hervey reflected.

He was aroused from his reflections by little Skinny. “I followed them from camp,” he said. “They’rerealtracks, ain’t they? And they’remine, ain’t they? Because I found them? Ain’t they?”

“Bet your life. I tell you what you do, Alf, old boy. You just follow them up a little way furthertoward the mountain and I’ll wait for you here. Then we can say you did it all by yourself, see? The handbook says a quarter of a mile or a half a mile, I don’t know what, but you might as well give them good measure. I can’t remember what’s in the handbook half of the time.”

“You know about good turns, don’t you?”

“’Fraid not, except when somebody reminds me.”

“I’m going to keep you for my friend even if Iama second-class scout, I am,” Skinny assured him.

“That’s right, don’t forget your old friends when you get up in the world.”

“Maybe you’ll get that canoe some day, hey?”

“What canoe is that, Alf?”

“The one for the highest honor; it’s on exhibition in Council Shack. All the fellows go in to look at it. A big fellow let me go in with him, ’cause I’m scared to go in there alone.”

“I haven’t been inside Council Shack in three weeks,” Hervey said. “I don’t know what it looks like inside that shanty. I’m not strong on exhibitions. I’ll take a squint at it when we go down.”

“The highest honor, that’s the Eagle award, isn’t it?” Skinny asked.

“I suppose so,” Hervey said; “a fellow can’t get any higher than the top unless he has an airplane.”

“Can he get higher than the top if he has a balloon?” Skinny wanted to know.

“Never you mind about balloons. What we’re after now is the second-class scout badge, and we’re going to get it if we have to kill a couple of councilmen.”

“Did you ever kill a councilman?”

“No, but I will, if Alf McCord, second-class scout, doesn’t get his badge. I feel just in the humor. Go on now, chase yourself up the line a ways and then come back. I’ll be waiting at the garden gate.”

“What gate?”

“I mean here on this log.”

“Do you know Tom Slade?”

“You bet.”

“He likes me, he does; because I used to steal things out of grocery stores just like he did—once.”

“All right,” Hervey laughed. “Go ahead now, it’s getting late—Asbestos.”

“That isn’t my name.”

“Well, you remind me of a friend of mine named Asbestos, and I remind myself of an eagle. Now don’t ask any more questions, but beat it.”

And so the scout who had never bothered his head about the more serious side of scouting sat on the log watching the little fellow as he followed those precious tracks a little further so that there might be no shadow of doubt about his fulfilling the requirement. Then Hervey shouted to him to come back, and shook hands with him and was the first to congratulate him on attaining to the dignity of second-class scout. Not a word did Hervey say about the amusing fact of little Skinny having followed the tracks backward; backward or forward, it made no difference; he had followed them, that was the main thing.

“They’remytracks; all mine,” Skinny said.

“You bet,” said Hervey; “you can roll them up and put them in your pocket if you want to.”

Skinny gazed at his companion as if he didn’t just see how he could do that.

And so they started down for camp together, verging away from the tracks of glory, so as to make a short cut.

“I bet you’re smart, ain’t you?” Skinny asked. “I bet you’re the best scout in this camp. I bet you know everything in the handbook, don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t know the handbook if I met it in the street,” Hervey said.

Skinny seemed a bit puzzled. “I had a bicycle that a big fellow gave me,” he said, “but it broke. Did you ever have a bicycle?”

“Well, I had one but I lost it before I got it,” Hervey said. “So I don’t miss it much,” he added.

“You sound as if you were kind of crazy,” Skinny said.

“I’m crazy about you,” Hervey laughed; and he gave Skinny a shove.

“Anyway, I like you a lot. And they’ll surely let me be a second-class scout now, won’t they?”

“I’d like to see them stop you.”

CHAPTER XVIIN DUTCH

That Hervey Willetts was a kind of odd number at camp was evidenced by his unfamiliarity with the things that were very familiar to most boys there. He was too restless to hang around the pavilion or sprawl under the trees or idle about with the others in and near Council Shack. He never read the bulletin board posted outside, and the inside was a place of so little interest to him that he had not even seen the beautiful canoe that was exhibited there, and on which so many longing eyes had feasted.

Now as he and Skinny entered that sanctum of the powers that were, he saw it for the first time. It was a beautiful canoe with a gold stripe around it and gunwales of solid mahogany. It lay on twosawhorses. Within it, arranged in tempting style, lay two shiny paddles, a caned back rest, and a handsome leather cushion. Upon it was a little typewritten sign which read:

This canoe to be given to the first scout this season to win the Eagle award.

This canoe to be given to the first scout this season to win the Eagle award.

“That’s rubbing it in,” said Hervey to himself. “That’s two things, a bicycle and a canoe I’ve lost before I got them.”

He sat down at the table in the public part of the office while Skinny, all excitement, stood by and watched him eagerly. He pulled a sheet of the camp stationery toward him and wrote upon it in his free, sprawling, reckless hand.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:This will prove that Alfred McCord of Bridgeboro troop tracked some kind of an animal for more than a half a mile, because I saw him doing it and I saw the tracks and I came back with him and I know all about it and it was one good stunt I’ll tell the world. So if that’s all he’s got to do to be a second-class scout, he’s got the badge already, and if anybody wants to know anything about it they can ask me.Hervey Willetts,Troop Cabin 13.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

This will prove that Alfred McCord of Bridgeboro troop tracked some kind of an animal for more than a half a mile, because I saw him doing it and I saw the tracks and I came back with him and I know all about it and it was one good stunt I’ll tell the world. So if that’s all he’s got to do to be a second-class scout, he’s got the badge already, and if anybody wants to know anything about it they can ask me.

Hervey Willetts,Troop Cabin 13.

After scrawling this conclusive affidavit and placing it under a weight on the desk of Mr. Wade, resident trustee, Hervey sauntered over to the cabins occupied by the two patrols of his troop, the Leopards and the Panthers. They were just getting ready to go to supper.

“Anything doing, Hervey?” his scoutmaster, Mr. Warren, asked him.

“Nothing doing,” Hervey answered laconically.

“Maybe he doesn’t know what you’re talking about,” one of his patrol, the Panthers, suggested. This was intended as a sarcastic reference to Hervey’s way of losing interest in his undertakings before they were completed.

“Have you got a trail—any tracks?” another asked.

Hervey began rummaging through his pockets and said, “I haven’t got one with me.”

“You didn’t happen to see that canoe in Council Shack, did you?” Mr. Warren asked him.

“Yes, it’s very nice,” Hervey said.

Mr. Warren paused a moment, irresolute.

“Hervey,” he finally said, “the boys think it’s too bad that you should fall down just at the last minute. After all you’ve accomplished, it seemslike—what shall I say—like Columbus turning back just before land was sighted.”

“He didn’t turn back,” Hervey said; “now there’s one thing I didn’t forget—my little old history book. When Columbus started to cross the Delaware——”

“Listen, Hervey,” Mr. Warren interrupted him; “suppose you and I walk together, I want to talk with you.”

So they strolled together in the direction of the mess boards.

“Now, Hervey, my boy,” said Mr. Warren, “I don’t want you to be angry at what I say, but the boys are disgruntled and I think you can’t blame them. They set their hearts on having the Eagle award in the troop and they elected you to bring it to them. I was the first to suggest you. I think we were all agreed that you had the, what shall I say, the pep and initiative to go out and get it. You won twenty badges with flying colors, I don’t know how you did it, and now you’re falling down all on account ofone single requirement.

“Is that fair to the troop, Hervey? Is it fair to yourself? It isn’t lack of ability; if it was I wouldn’t speak of it. But it’s because you tireof a thing before it’s finished. Think of the things you learned in winning those twenty badges—the Morse Code, life saving, carpentry work. How many of those things do you remember now? You have forgotten them all—lost interest in them all. I said nothing because I knew you were after the Eagle badge with both hands and feet, but now you see you have tired of that—right on the threshold of victory. You can’t blame the boys, Hervey, now can you?”

“Tracks are not so easy to find,” Hervey said, somewhat subdued.

“They are certainly not easy to find if you don’t look for them,” Mr. Warren retorted, not unpleasantly. “I heard a boy in camp say only this evening that that queer little duck in the Bridgeboro troop had found some tracks near the lake and started to follow them. There is no pair of eyes in camp better than yours, Hervey. But you know you can’t expect to find animal tracks down in the village.”

“In the village?”

“Two or three of your own patrol saw you down there a week ago, Hervey; saw you run out of a candy store to follow a runaway horse. Youknow, Hervey, horses’ tracks aren’t the kind you’re after. Those boys were observant. They were on their way to the post office. I heard them telling Tom Slade about it.”

“What didhesay—Tom Slade?” Hervey queried.

“Oh, he didn’t say anything; he never says much. But I think he likes you, Hervey, and he’ll be disappointed.”

“You think he will?”

“You know, Hervey, Tom Slade never won his place by jumping from one thing to another. The love of adventure and something new is good, but responsibility to one’s troop, to oneself, is more important. How will your father feel about the bicycle he had looked forward to giving you? You see, Hervey, you regarded the winning of the Eagle award as an adventure, whereas the troop regarded it as a commission—a commission entailing responsibility.”

“I’m not so stuck on eagles,” said Hervey, repeating Tom Slade’s very words. “There might be something better than the Eagle award, you can’t tell.”

“Oh, Hervey, my boy, don’t talk like that, andabove all, don’t let the boys hear you talk like that. There’s nothing better than to finish what you begin—nothing. You know, Hervey, I understand you thoroughly. You’re a wizard for stunts, but you’re weak on responsibility. Now you’ve got some new stunt on your mind, and the troop doesn’t count. Am I right?”

Hervey did not answer.

“And now the chance has nearly passed. Tomorrow we all go to the college regatta on the Hudson, the next day is camp clean-up and we’ve all got to work, and the next night, awards. Even if you were to do the unexpected now, I don’t know whether we could get the matter through and passed on for Saturday night. I’m disappointed with you, Hervey, and so are the boys. We all expected to see Mr. Temple hand you the Eagle badge on Saturday night. I expected to send your father a wire. Walley has been planning to take our picture as an Eagle troop.”

“Well, and you’ll all be disappointed,” said Hervey with a kind of heedlessness that nettled his scoutmaster. “And if anybody should ask you about it, any of the troop, you can just say that I found out something and that I’m not sostuck on the Eagle award, after all. That’s what you can tell them.”

“Well, I will tell them no such thing, for I would be ashamed to tell them that. I think we all know what the highest honor is. Perhaps the boys are not such reckless young adventurers as you, but they know what the highest scout honor is. And I think if you will be perfectly honest with me, Hervey, you’ll acknowledge that something new has caught your fancy. Come now, isn’t that right?”

“Right the first time,” said Hervey with a gayety that quite disgusted his scoutmaster.

“Well, go your way, Hervey,” he said coldly.

CHAPTER XVIIHERVEY GOES HIS WAY

So Hervey went his way alone, and a pretty lonesome way it was. The members of his troop made no secret of their disappointment and annoyance, he was clearly an outsider among them, and Mr. Warren treated him with frosty kindness. Hervey had been altogether too engrossed in his mad career of badge-getting to cultivate friends, he was always running on high, as the scouts of camp said, and though everybody liked him none had been intimate with him. He felt this now.

In those two intervening days between his adventure in the elm tree and the big pow-wow on Saturday night, he found a staunch friend in little Skinny, who followed him about like a dog. Theystuck together on the bus ride down to the regatta on the Hudson and were close companions all through the day.

Hervey did not care greatly for the boat races, because he could not be in them; he had no use for a race unless he could win it. So he and Skinny fished for a while over the rail of the excursion boat, but Hervey soon tired of this, because the fish would not coöperate. Then they pitched ball on the deck, but the ball went overboard and Mr. Warren would not permit Hervey to dive in after it. So he made a wager with Skinny that he could shinny up the flag-pole, but was foiled in his attempt by the captain of the boat. Thus he was driven to the refuge of conversation.

Balancing himself perilously on the rail in an unfrequented part of the steamer, he asked Skinny about the coveted award. “They’re not going to put you through a lot of book sprints, are they?” he inquired.

“I’m going to get it Saturday night,” Skinny said. “I bet all my troop will like me then, won’t they? I have to stand up straight when I go onthe platform. Some fellows get a lot of clapping when they go on the platform. I know two fellows that are going to clap when I go on. Will you clap when I go on? Because I like you a lot.”

“I’ll stamp with both feet,” said Hervey.

“And will you clap?”

“When you hear me clap you’ll think it’s a whole troop.”

“I bet your troop think a lot of you.”

“They could be arrested if they said out loud what they think of me.”

“My father got arrested once.”

“Well, I hope they won’t trip you up. That was a fine stunt you did, Skinny. When those trustees and scoutmasters once get busy with the handbook,good night, it reminds you of boyhood’s happy school days.”

“It’s all on page thirty,” Skinny said; “and I’ve done all of those ten things, because the tracking made ten, and Mr. Elting said as long as you said you saw me do it, it’s all right, because he knows you tell the truth.”

“Well, that’s one good thing about me,” Hervey laughed.

“And he said you came near winning the Eagle award, too. He said you only just missed it. I bet you’re a hero, ain’t you?”

“Some hero.”

“A boy said you gave the eagle a good run for it, even if you didn’t get it. He said you came near it.”

Hervey just sat on the rail swinging his legs. “I came pretty near the eagle, that’s right,” he said; “and if I’d got a little nearer I’d have choked his life out. That’s how much I think of the eagle.”

Skinny looked as if he did not understand.

“Did you see that bird that Tom Slade got? He got the nest and all. It’s hanging in the elm tree near the pavilion. There’s an oriole in that nest.”

“Get out!”

“Didn’t you see it yet?”

“Nope.”

“All the fellows saw it. That bird has got a name like the one you called me.”

“Asbestos?”

“Something like that. Why did you call me that name—Asbestos?”

“Well, because you’re more important than an eagle. See?”

“That’s no good of a reason.”

“Well, then, because you’re going to be a second-hand scout.”

“You mean second-class,” Skinny said; “that’s no good of a reason, either.”

“Well, I guess I’m not much good on reasons. I’d never win the reason badge, hey?”

“Do you know who is the smartest fellow in this camp?” Skinny asked, jumping from one thing to another in his erratic fashion. “Tom Slade. He knows everything. I like him but I like you better. He promised to clap when I go on the platform, too. Will you ask your troop to clap?”

“I’m afraid they don’t care anything about doing me a favor, Alf. Maybe they won’t feel like clapping. But your troop will clap.”

“Pee-wee Harris, he’s in my troop; he said he’d shout.”

“Good night!” Hervey laughed. “What more do you want?”

CHAPTER XVIIITHE DAY BEFORE

So it seemed that Tom Slade had brought the rescued oriole, bag and baggage, back to camp, and had said nothing of the circumstance of his finding it. He was indeed a queer, uncommunicative fellow.

Surely, thought Hervey, this scout supreme could have no thought of personal triumphs, for he was out of the game where such things were concerned, being already the hero of scout heroes, living among them with a kind of romantic halo about his head.

Hervey was a little puzzled as to why Tom had not given him credit for finding that little stranger who was now a sort of mascot in the camp. For the whole scout family had taken very kindly to Orestes.

In the loneliness of the shadow under which he spent those two days, Hervey would have welcomed the slight glory which a word or two from Tom Slade might have brought him. But Tom Slade said nothing. And it was not in Hervey’s nature to make any claims or boasts. He soon forgot the episode, as he forgot almost everything else that he had done and got through with. Glory for its own sake was nothing to him. He had climbed the tree and got his scout suit torn into shreds and that was satisfaction to him.

The next and last day before that momentous Saturday was camp clean-up day, for with the lake events on Labor Day the season would about close. All temporary stalking signs were taken down, original conveniences in and about the cabins were removed, troop and patrol fire clearings were raked over, two of the three large mess boards were stored away, and most of the litter cleared up generally. What was done in a small way each morning was done in a large way on this busy day, and every scout in camp did his share.

Hervey worked with his own troop, the members of which gave him scant attention. If theyhad ignored him altogether it would have been better than according him the cold politeness which they showed. No doubt their disappointment and humiliation were keen, and they showed it.

“What’ll I do with this eagle flag?” one of them called, as he displayed an emblem with an eagle’s head upon it, which one of the sisters of one of the boys had made in anticipation of the great event.

“Send it back to her,” another shouted. “We ought to have a flag with a chicken’s head on it. We counted our chickens before they were hatched.”

“Somefall-down; we should worry,” another said, busy at his tasks.

“Eagle fell asleep at the switch, didn’t you, Eagle?”

They called him Eagle in a kind of ironical contempt, and it cut him more than anything else that they said.

“Eagle with clipped wings, hey?” one of the troop wits observed.

“Help us take down this troop pole, will you?” Will Connor, Hervey’s patrol leader, called.“We should bother about the eagle; our eagle isn’t hatched yet.”

“Some eggs are rotten,” one of the Panthers retorted, which created a general laugh.

Hervey turned scarlet at this and his hands trembled on the oven stone which he was casting away. He dropped it and stood up straight, only to confront the stolid face of the young camp assistant looking straight at him.

“Getting all cleared up?” Tom asked in his usual sober but pleasant way.

Hervey Willetts was about to fly off the handle but something in Tom’s quiet, keen glance deterred him.

“You fellows going home soon?”

“Tuesday morning,” volunteered the Panthers’ patrol leader. “We usually don’t stick to the finish. We’re a troop of quitters, you know.”

“What did you quit?” asked Tom, taking his informant literally.

“Oh, never mind.”

“It’s all right, as long as you don’t quit each other,” Tom said, and strolled on to inspect the work of the other troops.

Hervey followed him and in a kind of reckless abandonment said, “Well, you see you were wrong after all—I don’t care. You said I’d win it. So I put one over on you, anyway,” he laughed in a way of mock triumph. “Tom Slade is wrong for once; how about that? The rotten egg put one over on you. See? I’m the rotten egg—the rotten egg scout. I should bother my head!”

“Go back and pick up those stones, Willetts,” said Tom quietly, “and pile them up down by the woodshed.”

“You didn’t even tell them I saved that little bird, did you?” Hervey said, giving way to his feelings of recklessness and desperation. “What do you supposeIcare? I don’t care what anybody thinks. I do what I do when I do it; that’s me! I don’t care a hang about your old badges—I——”

“Hervey,” said Tom; “go back and pile up those stones like I told you. And don’t get mad at anybody. You do just what I tell you.”

“Did you hear——”

“Yop. And I tell you to go back there and keep calm. I’m not interested in badges either;I’m interested in scouts. They’ll never be able to make a badge to fit you. Now go back and do what I told you. Who’s running this show? You or I?”

CHAPTER XIXTHE GALA DAY

As long as the cheerful blaze near the lakeside gathers its scouts about it on summer evenings, Temple Camp will never forget that memorable Saturday night. It is the one subject on which the old scout always discourses to the new scout when he takes him about and shows him the sights.

The one twenty-two train from the city brought John Temple, founder of Temple Camp, sponsor of innumerable scout enterprises, owner of railroads, banks, and goodness knows what all. He was as rich as the blackberry pudding of which Pee-wee Harris (official cut-up of the Ravens) always ate three helpings at mess.

His coming was preceded by telegrams going in both directions, talks over the long distance ’phone,and when at last he came in all his glory, a rainbow troop consisting of honor scouts was formed to go down to Catskill Landing and greet him. One scout who would presently be handed the Gold Cross for life saving was among the number. Others were down for the Star Scout badge, and the silver and the bronze awards. Others had passed with peculiar distinction the many and difficult tests for first-class scout. One, a little fellow from the west, had won the camp award for signaling. There were others, too, with attainments less conspicuous and who were not in this gala troop, but the whole camp was out to honor its heroes, one and all.

Roy Blakeley, of the Silver Foxes, had a wooden rattle which he claimed could be heard for seven miles—eight miles and a quarter at a pinch. The Tigers, with Bert Winton at their head, had some kind of an original contrivance which simulated the roar of their ferocious namesake. The Church Mice, from down the Hudson, with Brent Gaylong as their scoutmaster, had a special squeal (patent applied for) which sounded as if all the mice in Christendom had gone suddenly mad. Pee-wee had his voice—enough said.

The Panthers and the Leopards, with Mr. Warren, watched the departure of this rainbow troop with wistful glances. Then the scoutmaster took his chagrined followers to their bare cabins, stripped of all that had made them comfortable and homelike in their long stay at camp. Hervey was not among them. No one in all the camp knew how he had suffered from homesickness in those two days. He wanted to be home—home with his mother and father.

To his disappointed troop Mr. Warren said:

Scouts, we have not won the coveted award. But in this fraternal community, every award is an honor to every scout. We will try to find pride in the achievements of our friends and camp comrades. Our mistake was in selecting for our standard bearer one whose temperament disqualified him for the particular mission which he undertook. No shortcoming of cowardice is his, at all events, and I blame myself that I did not suggest one of you older boys.If we have not won the distinction we set our hearts on, our stay here has been pleasant and our achievement creditable, and for my part I give three cheers for the scouts who are to be honored and for the fortunate troops who will share their honors.

Scouts, we have not won the coveted award. But in this fraternal community, every award is an honor to every scout. We will try to find pride in the achievements of our friends and camp comrades. Our mistake was in selecting for our standard bearer one whose temperament disqualified him for the particular mission which he undertook. No shortcoming of cowardice is his, at all events, and I blame myself that I did not suggest one of you older boys.

If we have not won the distinction we set our hearts on, our stay here has been pleasant and our achievement creditable, and for my part I give three cheers for the scouts who are to be honored and for the fortunate troops who will share their honors.

This good attempt to revive the spirits of his disappointed troop was followed by three feeblecheers, which ought to have gone on crutches, they were so weak.

Hervey was not in evidence throughout the day, and since no news is good news, one or two unquenchable spirits in his troop continued to hope that he would put in a dramatic appearance just in the nick of time, with the report of a sensational discovery—the tracks of a bear or a wild cat, for instance. It is significant that they would have been quite ready to believe him, whatever he had said.

But Mr. Warren knew, as his troop did not, of Hervey’s saying that he wasn’t so stuck on eagles, and he was satisfied from the talk that he had had with him that Hervey’s erratic and fickle nature had asserted itself in the very moment of high responsibility. He could not help liking Hervey, but he would never again allow the cherished hopes of the troop to rest upon such shaky foundation.

Whatever lingering hopes the troop might have had of a last minute triumph were rudely dispelled when Hervey came sauntering into camp at about four o’clock twirling his hat on the end of a stick in an annoyingly care-free manner.Tom Slade saw him passing Council Shack intent upon his acrobatic enterprise of tossing the hat into the air and catching it on his head, as if this clownish feat were the chief concern of his young life.

“You going to be on hand at five?” Tom queried in his usual off-hand manner.

“What’s the use?” Hervey asked. “There’s nothing in it for me.”

Tom leaned against the railing of the porch, with his stolid, half interested air.

“Nothing in it for me,” Hervey repeated, twirling his hat on the stick in fine bravado.

“So you’ve decided to be a quitter,” Tom said, quietly.

Hervey winced a bit at this.

“You know you said you weren’t so stuck on eagles,” Hervey reminded him, rather irrelevantly.

“Well, I’m not so stuck on quitters either,” Tom said.

“What’s the good of my going? I’m not getting anything out of it.”

“Neither am I,” said Tom.

“You got stung when you made a prophecyabout me, didn’t you?” Hervey said with cutting unkindness. “You and I both fell down, hey? We’re punk scouts—we should bother our heads.”

Again he began twirling his hat on the stick. “I couldn’t sit with my troop, anyway,” he added; “I’m in Dutch.”

“Well, sit with mine, then; Roy Blakeley and that bunch are all from my home town; they’re nice fellows. You know Pee-wee Harris—the little fellow that fell off the springboard?”

“I ought to like him; we both fell down.”

“Well, you be on hand at five o’clock and don’t make matters worse, like a young fool. If you’ve lost the eagle, you’ve lost it. That’s no reason you should slight Mr. Temple, who founded this camp. We expect every scout in camp to be on hand. You’re not the only one in camp who isn’t getting the Eagle award.”

“You call me a fool?”

“Yes, you’re twenty different kinds of a fool.”

“Almost an Eagle fool, hey?”

He went on up the hill toward his patrol cabin, tossing his hat in the air and trying to catch it on his head. As luck would have it, just before heentered the little rustic home of sorrow, the hat landed plunk on his head, a little to the back and very much to the side, and he let it remain in that rakish posture when he entered.

The effect was not pleasing to his comrades and scoutmaster.

CHAPTER XXUNCLE JEB

At five o’clock every seat around the open air platform was occupied. Every bench out of Scout Chapel, the long boards on which the hungry multitude lined up at supper-time, every chair from Council Shack and Main Pavilion, and many a trunk and cedar chest from tents and cabins and a dozen other sorts of makeshift seating accommodations were laid under contribution for the gala occasion. And even these were not enough, for the whole neighboring village turned out in a body, and gaping summer boarders strolled into the camp in little groups, thankful for something to do and see.

There was plenty doing. Those who could not get seats sprawled under the trees in back ofthe seats and a few scouts perched up among the branches.

Upon the makeshift rustic platform sat the high dignitaries, scoutmasters, trustees—the faculty, as Hervey was fond of calling them. In the big chair of honor in the center sat Mr. John Temple and alongside him Commissioner Something-or-Other and Committeeman Something Else. They had come up from the big scout wigwam, in the dense woods on the corner of Broadway and Twenty-third Street, New York.

Resounding cheers arose and echoed from the hills when old Uncle Jeb Rushmore, retired ranchman and tracker, and scout manager of the big camp, took his seat among the high dignitaries. He made some concession to the occasion by wearing a necktie which was half way around his neck, and by laying aside his corn-cob pipe.

Tom Slade, who sat beside his superior, looked none the less romantic in the scout regalia which he wore in honor of the occasion. His popularity was attested as he took his seat by cries of “Tomasso!” “Oh, you, Tomasso!” “Where did you get that scout suit, Tomasso?” “Oh, you, Tommy boy!”

Tom, stolid and with face all but expressionless, received these tributes with the faintest suggestion of a smile. “Don’t forget to smile and look pretty!” came from the rear of the assemblage.

As was usual at Temple Camp festivities, the affair began with three resounding cheers for Uncle Jeb, followed by vociferous appeals for a speech. Uncle Jeb’s speeches were an institution at camp. Slowly dragging himself to his feet, he sprawled over to the front of the platform and said in his drawling way:

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