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ROY BLAKELEY’S TANGLED TRAIL


[Illustration: PEE-WEE WENT DANCING AROUND WAVING THE BURNING PAPER.]


ROY BLAKELEY’S
TANGLED TRAIL

by

PERCY KEESE FITZHUGH

Author of
the Tom Slade Books, the Roy Blakeley
Books, the Pee-Wee Harris Books,
Westy Martin, etc.

Illustrated by H. S. Barbour

Published with the Approval of
the Boy Scouts of America






Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers : : New York

Made in the United States of America

Copyright, 1924, by
Grosset & Dunlap




                                CONTENTS

                    I Greetings
                   II On the Shelf
                  III Hervey and the Camp
                   IV Tracks
                    V Plans
                   VI We Start
                  VII The Fall of Scout Harris
                 VIII Foiled Again
                   IX The Sound of Merry Laughter
                    X The Plot Grows Thicker—the Mud Too
                   XI An Intermission
                  XII Girls and Wasps
                 XIII “The Shiveller”
                  XIV Hands Off
                   XV Stung
                  XVI Jelly Cones
                 XVII Ancient History
                XVIII A Story of the Past
                  XIX We Meet a Stranger
                   XX A Rare Species
                  XXI Thirty-four Cents
                 XXII Our Favorite Outdoor Sport
                XXIII Hunting for Trouble
                 XXIV The Flapper and the Flopper
                  XXV Resources and Things
                 XXVI Flop Number Two
                XXVII The Black Sheep
               XXVIII Through the Mist
                 XXIX Eyes to See and Ears to Hear
                  XXX The Three of Us
                 XXXI The Voice in the Night
                XXXII Hervey All Over
               XXXIII Hervey’s Serenade
                XXXIV Tom Fixes It
                 XXXV To the Point




                      ROY BLAKELEY’S TANGLED TRAIL




                               CHAPTER I

                               GREETINGS


Hello, everybody, this is the first story I wrote in a long time, only I
haven’t written it yet. I mean when it’s all written it will be the
first one I wrote in a long time.

That’s because my fountain pen got broken on account of stirring coffee
with it in camp. Pee-wee Harris said that needn’t make any difference
because a scout is supposed to be able to write with a charred stick
whittled to a point.

He says that’s the way pioneers wrote. He thinks the word pioneer comes
from the word pie. He says that’s the way he writes. No wonder his
stories are such black mysteries, that’s what my sister says. He says
scouts are supposed to write on birch bark. But believe me, paper is
good enough, I tried birch bark. But anyway I like birch beer. I’m crazy
about root beer too, only it reminds me of cube root and that reminds me
of arithmetic.

Maybe you don’t know what cube root is; you’re lucky. Cube root is the
number which taken three times as a factor produces a given number
called its cube. I should worry. Because anyway this story isn’t about
cubes, it’s about rubes and boobs and a lot of things and some roots but
no cubes. You get those in school and school is closed up or I wouldn’t
be writing this story.

Anyway I began this story twice. Gee whiz, I thought I was going to
strike out. The first time I started with a long description of Temple
Camp, and my father said it made him sleepy. Then after I went camping
over Sunday I started again, and coffee came out of my fountain pen, and
my sister said that a story like that would keep everybody awake, and I
told her that’s more than some stories do.

So then I cleaned my fountain pen out and started again, and this is my
third start, and my pen’s working fine. Only I’ve got to go downstairs
to supper now so I have to end this chapter.

My sister says the place to end chapters is just when something very
exciting is happening. But my mother says the place to end them is just
when the dinner gong sounds. Anyway to-night we’re going to have
chocolate pudding and that’s exciting so you’ll be in suspense while I’m
eating chocolate pudding and after that I bet you don’t know who you’re
going to meet.




                               CHAPTER II

                              ON THE SHELF


Mm, _mmm_, that was good! I remind myself of Pee-wee Harris, eating
three helpings. Now I’m going to start.

When I went up to Temple Camp this summer about the first scout I saw
was Hervey Willetts. I guess you know that fellow all right. He comes
from Massachusetts—as often as he can. That’s the place he goes away
from.

I’ll tell you just where he was sitting. You know how the cooking shack
is—it’s right at the edge of the lake. Chocolate Drop, he’s cook. He’s a
kind of a whitish black. He’s the color of the middle of the night.
There’s a big window facing the lake and it’s got a kind of a big board
shutter with hinges on top. The first thing in the morning, Chocolate
Drop opens that and props it open with a stick so it sticks out like a
kind of a shelf.

Hervey Willetts was sitting on that board shelf. If Chocolate Drop had
taken the prop away Hervey Willetts would have gone into the lake. But
that was just what he wanted. He was just sitting there waiting for
Chocolate Drop to let down that shutter. Then he could say that he
didn’t go into the lake after five o’clock because that’s against the
rule. He could say he was sitting on shore and Chocolate Drop dumped him
into the lake. That way he could get a swim in the evening. He didn’t
say so, but I know that fellow. He would get a swim accidentally on
purpose.

He was sitting there with nothing on but an old pair of khaki trousers
and a khaki shirt and that crazy hat he always wears with the brim all
gone and the crown all full of holes and campaign buttons and things.
Gee whiz, you can always tell him by that hat. I could see him sitting
there as we rowed across the lake from the trail side—that’s the way we
always go.

I shouted, “Look who’s here.”

He called back, “I’m looking; it’s just as unpleasant for me as it is
for you.”

“The pleasure is mine,” I told him. “I suppose you think you’re going to
get a swim after hours without getting called for it.”

“That shows your evil mind,” he said. “I was watching the sun go down.”

“Yes, and waiting to go down yourself,” I told him. “I’m waiting to see
the scout go down. I always hated geography but there’s one thing I like
about Massachusetts and that is that you’re away from there. I suppose
you’ve got some new stunts this summer.”

“Hurry up and land,” he said, “and get through with your suppers. Supper
was over an hour ago.”

He said that because he knew that Chocolate Drop wouldn’t let down that
shutter till the last supper was over and everything was cleared up in
Cooking Shack. Then he would be dumped into the lake accidentally.
_Christopher_, but the trustees never seemed to get wise to Hervey
Willetts. He looked awful funny sitting up there on that kind of a shelf
all ready to be, you know, preciprocated or precipitated or whatever you
call it, I should worry.

All of a sudden there was a voice from the Mammoth Cave in the other
rowboat. “Let’s foil him,” said Pee-wee. “Just for fun let’s keep on
eating for a couple of hours till he’s called to camp-fire. That’ll keep
Chocolate Drop in the shack.”

“Listen to the famine talking,” I said.

“He can even hold a heavy shutter up an hour or so with a half a dozen
pieces of pie,” said Warde Hollister.

“You should worry about our suppers,” I told him. “We always take our
time eating. We expect to spend a couple of hours at the board and you
can spend a couple of hours on _that_ board.”

“Maybe even we’ll eat four desserts,” Pee-wee shouted.

“We’ve got to unpack our baggage first,” I called, “and then wash up and
go and say hello to Uncle Jeb and in about half an hour we’ll get around
to eating.”

“After that we don’t know how long we’ll take,” Pee-wee yelled.

“Sure, a scout is thorough,” shouted Westy from my boat.

“What’s that got to do with me?” Hervey asked.

“Oh, positively, absolutely nothing,” I said. “Far be it from me to say
you have any——”

“Exterior motives,” shouted Pee-wee.

“Ulterior motives,” I said. “Only I’m just telling you that maybe it
will be a large collection of hours before the window of the cooking
shack is closed up for the night. So don’t worry about falling into the
water—yet. We’ll tell you in time.”

“What do you mean, you’ll tell me in time?” said Hervey, very innocent
like.

Jiminy, he looked awful funny sitting up there on that window board with
his knees drawn up, staring at us just as if he was puzzled to know what
we were driving at. Insulted, kind of. That was him all over. Sort of
careless like. You’d never think he had any plans at all. He never broke
any rules on purpose—oh, far be it from it!

“Got any new songs this summer?” Warde Hollister shouted at him. Because
he always had a lot of crazy stuff that he was always singing and that’s
why everybody called him the wandering minstrel. None of us ever knew
where he got all the stuff he sang.

He’d come wandering into camp late for supper twirling that funny cap of
his on the end of a stick and singing, and the trustees or Uncle Jeb or
maybe his scoutmaster who would be all ready with a good calling-down
would just kind of smile and say nothing. The stormy petrel, they called
him that too. Gee whiz, nobody could help liking that fellow. He was an
odd number, I’ll say that.

“All right, Hervey,” Westy called kind of good-natured like. Westy never
breaks any camp rules, but just the same he likes Hervey. “Go on, give
us a song.”

So then Hervey started singing that crazy song that got us into so much
trouble that summer. We couldn’t hear the end of it, because pretty soon
we were at the landing and everybody was crowding there to meet us.
Anyhow this is the way it started:

        “When you go on a hike just you mind what I say,
        The right way to go is the opposite way.

        If you come to a cross-road don’t make a mistake,
        Choose a road and the _other’s_ the one you should take.

        Don’t bother with sign boards but follow this song,
        If you start on the right road you’re sure to go wrong.

        You can go on your feet, you can go on a bike,
        But the right way is wrong when you start on a hike.”




                              CHAPTER III

                          HERVEY AND THE CAMP


I don’t know, it seemed kind of natural, sort of, for us to see Hervey
Willetts like that, away from all the other scouts at camp. I said to
Westy I was kind of glad we saw him first just the way we did and that
he wasn’t in the crowd at the landing.

Westy said the same thing. I don’t know why he said that, but it seemed
as if Hervey was different from everybody else; I guess that’s what we
were thinking. Most always he was alone.

He had lots and lots of friends, but they weren’t scouts at camp. He
knew all the farmers around the country, and sometimes he stayed at
their homes all night. He got acquainted with peddlers and tramps and
stayed away and, gee whiz, you couldn’t blame the trustees for getting
mad. He was funny in some ways.

He could do most anything, but yet he never bothered his head about
merit badges. Mr. Ellsworth (he’s our scoutmaster) said Hervey was an
adventurer, not a scout. He said he could do stunts, but he could never
do tests. Mr. Ellsworth said scouting is a kind of a harness, and Hervey
couldn’t wear a harness. Anyway, just the same he liked Hervey because
he just couldn’t help it.

I had to laugh to myself when I thought how he was sitting on that
shutter just waiting for it to be let down so he could have a swim after
hours. He could say he fell in and had to swim to the landing. If
anybody would be to blame it would be Chocolate Drop, who always let the
shutter down from the inside.

I was wondering how Hervey got out there on that shutter. He must have
climbed over the roof of the cooking shack and let himself down on the
side over the lake. I had to laugh when I thought how funny it would
look when the shutter was let down to see him go sprawling accidentally
on purpose into the lake, which would be just what he wanted. I knew he
intended to beat the rule, but gee, I couldn’t help seeing the funny
side of it.

But anyway, soon we forgot all about it on account of the scouts all
being at the landing to meet us. I guess every scout I ever saw at
Temple Camp was there. Bert Winton was there and Brent Gaylong. He was
just as lanky as ever, and his spectacles were half-way down his nose
like a schoolmaster, and he had that same slow, drawly, funny way about
him.

There’s always a big fuss when our troop gets to camp, because Mr.
Temple, who started the camp, lives in our town. Pee-wee says Mr. Temple
donated the camp, and he thinks that means he supplied it with
doughnuts. The reason why Mr. Temple doughnutted the camp is because he
was interested in Tom Slade when Tom was a hoodlum in our town.

Tom Slade used to be in our troop, but now he stays at Temple Camp all
the time, and he’s assistant manager under Uncle Jeb Rushmore, and Uncle
Jeb used to be a trapper, and he fought with General Custer, and Pee-wee
thinks that General Custer was named after cup custards, and General
Custer fought the Indians, and if it wasn’t for the Indians we wouldn’t
have any Indian pudding, and that’s my favorite dessert.

So that brings me to the part where we were all eating dessert that
first night we got to Temple Camp. Everybody was through supper and we
had the eats pavilion all to ourselves on account of it being too dark
to eat at the big mess-board out under the trees.

I guess you know all about the troop I’m in. It’s the first Bridgeboro
troop of Bridgeboro, New Jersey. If you want to know where New Jersey
is, it’s on page twenty-seven of the geography.

These are the three patrols in our troop, and about twice a minute
Pee-wee starts another one. But don’t pay any attention to the patrols
he starts, because they don’t amount to anything. The only warranted,
genuine patrols in our troop are the raving Ravens (he’s one of them, I
mean he’s about six of them) and the Elks and the Silver Foxes. I’m
patrol leader of the Silver Foxes.

The best thing about the Ravens is that they’re not Elks. And the best
thing about the Elks is that they’re not Ravens. And the worst thing
about the Silver Foxes is that they’re in the same troop with the Elks
and the Ravens—they’re more to be pitied than blamed. Temple Camp is at
Black Lake and Black Lake is in the Catskills, and the Catskills are
somewhere or other, I should worry, you reach them in the second grade,
that’s all I know.

So now you know about Hervey Willetts and my troop and Temple Camp, and
if you want to know all the rest about them you’ll find it in a lot of
stories I wrote that have my picture on the cover of them. All those
stories are crazier than each other. But if you want to read the
craziest one of all you want to read this one. Even the laughing brook
at Temple Camp died laughing.

It’s such a lot of nonsense that it’s dedicated to a crazy quilt. Every
bit of it is taken from life, and my sister says life ought to be
thankful to get rid of it. Many thanks, I told her. Anyway, I don’t care
what you say, this story is all about real happenings—real adventures
and real estate. _Oh, boy_, wait till you see the real estate that’s in
it.




                               CHAPTER IV

                                 TRACKS


While we were finishing our supper Chocolate Drop came in and talked to
us and told us all the news. We kept him there talking just to make
Hervey wait. Pee-wee kept on eating.

“I’m doing it just for the fun of it,” he said with his mouth full of
pie.

“You mean you’re doing it just for the taste of it,” I told him.

“I’m prvntngscoutfrombrules,” he said.

“Your carburetor’s flooded,” I told him.

“I’m preventing a scout from breaking the rules,” he said.

“That’s better,” Westy told him.

I knew Hervey wouldn’t slide off the shutter while it was up, and I knew
that Chocolate Drop wouldn’t let it down as long as we were eating, and
I knew Pee-wee wouldn’t stop eating as long as there was anything left
to eat. I knew Pee-wee would win if his ammunition held out.

After a while he began eating apple sauce, and then I knew there was no
hope for Hervey. Because Pee-wee eats apple sauce better than anything
else; you’d think he was a presti—a presti—diget—I should worry, you
know what I mean, the way he makes it disappear—I mean a man that does
tricks, a magician, or whatever you call him.

We were all sitting around watching him eat apple sauce, Chocolate Drop
and all. I mean Chocolate Drop was sitting around watching with the rest
of us. He wasn’t eating Chocolate Drop, far be it from it absolutely
nevertheless. We were all laughing, thinking about Hervey sitting out
there on that window shutter waiting for a chance to break the rule by
an unavoidable cat—you know what I mean—a catas—something like an
accident. Hervey was waiting for the apple sauce to stop going down so
_he_ could go down.

All of a sudden who should come strolling into the room but Brent
Gaylong. He’s kind of long and lanky, and he wears spectacles, and he’s
awful funny on account of being so sober. He takes everything as it
comes, the same as Pee-wee does when he’s eating. He just kind of
strolled over to the table and lifted the hanging lamp off its rack and
marched out with it.

He said, “You fellows don’t need this.”

So there we sat in total darkness—I just happened to think of that word
_total_, but anyway I don’t like it because it reminds me of arithmetic.

“We need this lamp to investigate some heavy tracks,” Brent said.

Gee whiz, you should have seen us all jump up, even Pee-wee. Because
tracks are our middle name. We all started following Brent out and it
looked awful funny, that parade with him at the head of it, carrying the
lamp. He’s awful funny, that fellow is, on account of being so sober. He
looks just as if school was opening or something like that.

Now I told you we’re all crazy and I’m going to prove it because we just
followed him around just like when you play follow your leader.

“Where are the tracks?” Pee-wee wanted to know. I guess he was beginning
to be sorry that he had left the apple sauce.

“Right down by the shore,” Brent said.

“Did you say they’re heavy tracks?” the kid wanted to know, all excited.
“I bet they’re from a bull moose.”

“They’re the heaviest tracks I ever saw,” Brent said. He looked awful
funny carrying that big lamp. He said, “I thought you fellows would be
willing to cut short your suppers to see them. They’re down by the
shore.”

“It’s a moose,” Pee-wee shouted. “He went there to drink.”

“If we can pick them up——” Brent started to say.

“I’ll pick them up,” Pee-wee shouted.

“And hold them——” Brent started again.

“I can pick up any tracks and hold them even on hard land,” Pee-wee
said. “Don’t you know I’ve got the pathfinder’s badge?”

“He’s got so many badges he’s got the badger beat,” I said.

“Well, here they are,” Brent said.

By that time we had come to the shore and there in front of us were a
couple of pieces of railroad track about a foot long each. They were the
same two pieces that had always been there; they used to be used for
anchors in the rowboats.

Every scout in camp knew about those two rusty old pieces of railroad
track.

Brent said, very sober like, “What do you think of them? Is it a bull
moose?”

“They look more like the tracks of a pig,” I said; “they’re pig iron.”

“You said you could pick up any tracks and hold them,” Westy said to
Pee-wee. “Let’s see you do it.”

“You make me tired!” the kid yelled. “I stopped eating apple sauce on
account of you.”

“You would have had to stop some time,” Brent said.

“No, I wouldn’t,” the kid shouted.

I said, “You should have known what he meant when he said ‘heavy
tracks.’”

“You make me tired,” he said; “you didn’t know either.”

“Sure we knew,” I said. “You’re so dumb you think a railroad track is
made by a bull moose. You desert your dessert and you’ve got your just
deserts, and if there’s anything we’re sorry for we’re glad of it.”

“You’re all crazy!” Pee-wee yelled.

Just then, _bang_, down went the window shutter of the cooking shack and
then _kerplash_ we heard Hervey go tumbling into the water. _Some_
accident!

“Any one hurt?” Brent called out very surprised like.

“No, I just fell into the water,” Hervey spluttered.

“Too bad,” said Brent.

I just looked at Brent and laughed. All the while he looked very sober
and innocent.

I said, “You didn’t do a thing but help Hervey out.”

“You mean he helped Hervey in,” Warde Hollister said.

“I? What do you mean?” Brent asked us.

“You had a conspiracy to circumvent my apple sauce,” the kid screamed;
“_I_ know. You can’t fool me. You just deliberately on purpose stopped
me from eating so Hervey Willetts could fall in the water, and you want
us to think that you’re very innocent with your heavy tracks, but anyway
I bet my appetite is just as heavy, and I could have prevented him from
falling in the lake only you stopped me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Brent said, very surprised and
innocent. Gee whiz, he and Hervey Willetts are some pair. They’ve got
Bartlett pears beaten twenty ways.

“You don’t mean to tell me I’d aid and abet anybody in breaking a rule,
do you?” Brent said.

“Oh, positively, absolutely not,” I said. “Say not so. It just happened
thusly as it were by an unforeseen accident that was planned out. You’re
one good fellow, Brent, you’re always helping somebody.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Brent said.

“You don’t mean he helped _me_, do you?” our young Mammoth Cave wanted
to know.

“Didn’t you have helpings enough to-night?” I asked him.




                               CHAPTER V

                                 PLANS


So that was about all that happened that night, only that crazy song
that Hervey sang when we first saw him, and Brent Gaylong marching ahead
of us out of the eats pavilion is what put it into our heads to have a
crazy hike like the Bee-line hike, only crazier.

My sister said it ought to be called light fiction on account of Brent
carrying the lamp, and my father said it ought to be a serial story on
account of there being a lot of oatmeal in it, but anyway, the right
name of it is _The Lunatic Hike or Boy Scouts on the Other Road_. Only
you’re not supposed to use the right name because everything in this
story is wrong and you’re supposed to use the wrong name and that is
_The Left-handed Hike or Where Are We At?_ Because the wrong name is the
right name and it’s affectionately dedicated to five cents’ worth of
peanuts on account of all the characters in it being nuts.

When Hervey came out of the water he went up to dry himself at
camp-fire. Everybody said it was too bad he fell into the water, and Mr.
Alton (he’s one of the trustees) said that the window shutter of the
cooking shack wasn’t a very good place to be sitting watching the
sunset. Gee whiz, you never know just what that man means when he says
something.

Brent said, “Accidents will happen.”

“Anyway the rest of the apple sauce was saved from a horrible death,” I
said.

Now kind of on account of what happened that night, Hervey and Brent and
Pee-wee and Warde Hollister and I sat together at camp-fire. We kind of
made a little group by ourselves back from the crowd. It was darker back
there, and we liked it better. That’s the way with Hervey, he always
sprawls around away from the crowd.

I said, “I tell you a good kind of a hike—a spook hike; with Brent going
ahead carrying the lamp. A hike in the pitch dark.”

“This isn’t Hallowe’en,” Warde said. “What was that stuff you were
singing, Hervey, when we came across the lake to-night a little while
before your——”

“Your mishap,” Brent said.

“That’s the word—_mishap_,” I said. “You took the word out of my mouth.”

“He didn’t take it out of your mouth at all,” Pee-wee said. “You just
think it’s smart to say that.”

“No one could ever take anything out of _your_ mouth, that’s one sure
thing,” I told him. “What was that you were singing?” I asked Hervey.

“It goes with a hike,” Hervey said.

“Let it go,” Warde said. “You won’t catch _me_ going.”

“Or me either,” our young hero piped up. “Not with Hervey Willetts. Not
if it’s one of those follow-your-leader hikes.”

“This is different,” Hervey said. “The song explains it. It’s simple,
all you have to do is turn to the left. Don’t pay any attention to the
roads on the right, but turn into every road that goes to the left. And
you’re sure to get there.”

“Where?” the kid hollered.

“Anywhere,” I said. “Can’t you understand plain English?”

“Anywhere isn’t a place,” the kid shouted.

“That shows how much you know about geography,” I told him. “It’s the
best place in the world. You’re so dumb you think that a plot in a story
is where the grass grows. You don’t even know where a place is. Proceed
with the singing,” I said to Hervey.

“And get it over with,” Warde said.

So then Hervey sang that crazy song again, lying on his back and kicking
that crazy hat of his from one foot to the other. Here it is because,
gee whiz, I’ll never forget it:

       “When you go on a hike just you mind what I say,
       The right way to go is the opposite way.

       If you come to a cross-road don’t make a mistake,
       Choose a road, and the _other’s_ the one you should take.

       Don’t bother with sign boards but follow this song,
       If you start on the right road you’re sure to go wrong.

       You can go on your feet, you can go on a bike,
       But the right way is wrong when you start on a hike.”

Brent said in that funny, drawly way he has, “I rather like that song.
It hasn’t any object.”

“It hasn’t any subject or predicate either,” I said. “All the
injunctions are qualified by the propositions.”

“You mean _con_junctions and _pre_positions,” Pee-wee yelled. “That
shows how much you know about grammar.”

“It’s the geography of the song that I like,” Brent said. “I’d like to
go there.”

“Where?” the kid asked.

“To the left,” Brent said. “I’ve heard there’s a lot of fun there.” He
was lying on his back looking right up into the sky, and his hands were
clasped behind his head. He seemed awful funny—sober like.

“Well, you can bet I’m not going there,” Pee-wee said.

“Well, that’s one good thing about the place anyway,” I told him. “If
what you say is true there ought to be a lot of fun there.”

“If what did I say is true?” the kid shouted.

“That you’re not going there,” I said.

“How can I not go to a place when I don’t know where it is?” he yelled.

“That’s the right question to the answer,” I said. “I say, we five start
to-morrow morning. It won’t take us long because if we don’t know where
we’re going we ought to be back by some time or other.”

“Oh, long before that,” said Brent.

“You’re all crazy!” Pee-wee yelled.

“Now you’re talking sense,” I said.




                               CHAPTER VI

                                WE START


So the next morning the five of us started out. We were a kind of a
rainbow patrol because we belonged to different troops. But anyway we
were all scouts—especially Hervey Willetts, because he’s an out-and-out
scout on account of being out all the time.

The only one of us that was normal was Warde; he’s so normal that he’s
going to the State Normal School, only when he’s with us he’s crazy
because it’s catching.

The first trouble we had just before we started was really just after we
started, because when we passed Commissary Shack we were going to stop
and have them put us up a lunch, but Hervey said we were on the path to
the main road and Commissary Shack was on our right, and we had no right
to stop there.

“We haven’t started yet,” Pee-wee shouted. “We don’t start till we get
to the road; we’re still in camp!”

“Who’s still?” I asked him. “It’s the first time I ever knew you to be
still. We’re on the path leading to the main road. If you leave the path
you’re out of the hike. On this hike we have no right to pay any
attention to anything that’s right. We can only turn into roads to the
left and we can’t pay any attention to things on the right-hand side of
those roads—only the left. There isn’t any right at all on this hike.
We’re only supposed to see out of our left eyes.”

“Do you mean to tell me I have to keep my right eye shut?” Pee-wee
shouted.

“And your mouth too,” I told him.

“Now I _know_ you’re all crazy!” he yelled.

“Right,” I said.

“You mean left,” Hervey put in.

Brent said, “Before we go any farther let’s settle about the rules.”

Hervey said, “The idea is to turn into every road we come to that goes
to the left; that’s the only rule.”

“And we mustn’t pay any attention to anything that’s on the right-hand
side of the left-hand road,” I said.

“Absolutely, positively,” Warde said.

“How are we going to get back?” the kid wanted to know. “Do you think I
want to spend the rest of my life turning to the left?”

“If you’re going to spend the rest of your life turning, the left is
just as good as the right,” I told him. “Those are the two best
directions except the one you usually go in, and that’s up in the air.”

“You’ll be sorry we didn’t take lunch with us,” he said.

“I’m sorry already,” I told him, “but duty is duty; we can’t start off
by turning to the right, lunch or no lunch. Better starvation than
dishonor. Anyway here comes Sandwich, let’s take him along.”

Now I’ll tell you about Sandwich. He’s the dog at Temple Camp, and we
call him Sandwich because he’s half-bred. Nobody knows how he got to
Temple Camp, but a lot of scouts say he followed Hervey Willetts from
Catskill. If he did he must have had some job. He’s a sort of blackish
white. It’s good his tail is at the other end of him, because it would
make him nervous to see it. Anyway he should worry. So as long as he was
going to go anyway we invited him.

All of a sudden, just as we were turning into the West Trail around the
lake (because that turns out of Cabin Lane to the left) a scout called
after Hervey Willetts and said, “Hey, Hervey, you’re wanted within.”

“Can you beat that?” Hervey wanted to know, all disgruntled.

“You better go back,” I said, because I know he doesn’t think much about
not paying any attention to trustees and people like that.

“Within where?” he called out.

“Within the next six or seven hours,” the scout shouted.

“No sooner said than stung,” I told Hervey.

That fellow’s always afraid he’ll be called down as many times as I get
called up, because I know a girl in Catskill—that’s about ten miles from
camp—and she’s all the time calling me up to go and play basket-ball.
Pee-wee has no use for basket-ball, but he’s crazy about basket lunches.

So long, I’ve got to go to scout meeting now. When I get home I’m going
to start chapter seven. And when you start reading it you want to look
out not to get too near the edge, because there’s all water in that
chapter. It’s kind of like a lake surrounded by a chapter—you’ll see.




                              CHAPTER VII

                        THE FALL OF SCOUT HARRIS


Now this is the way we started. We went through Cabin Lane (that’s part
of Temple Camp) and passed Commissary Shack and turned into the first
path to the left and that’s West Trail, and it goes around the lake
through the woods.

Pee-wee said, “Now it shows how crazy you all are because this trail
will bring us right back to where we started, and if we start again
we’ll only do the same thing over again, and we might just as well try
to get somewhere on a merry-go-round.”

“That’s a very good idea,” I told him; “a merry-go-round hike, I never
thought of that.”

“What’s the use just going around and around the lake all the time?” he
shouted. “Do you call that a hike?”

“When we get back we can say we’ve been around a lot,” Brent said.

“And what are we going to do when we get back?” the kid yelled.

“Oh, we’re just going to keep on going till we find a path to the left,”
Warde said.

“If there isn’t a path to the left the first time there won’t be one the
second time, will there?” our young hero screamed.

“If you don’t succeed at first try, try again,” Hervey said. He looked
awful funny marching ahead through the woods with the rest of us after
him. He looked very serious like, just as if we were really going
somewhere. Brent followed along right after him, very sober, with his
spectacles half-way down his nose, the way he always wears them. He’s
long and lanky and always very sober, that fellow is. I mean he acts
sober. He said:

“This is just as good as a trip around the world only it’s shorter. When
you start around the world you don’t get anywhere; you just come back to
the place where you started. That’s because the world is round. If a
thing’s round and you start around it you can’t have any destination.
That’s logic.”

“Absolutely, positively,” Warde said. “The equator is all right but it
doesn’t get you anywhere. This is a round trip, we’re encircling the
lake.”

“How many times are we going to encircle it?” the kid fairly screeched.
“You call that logic? Do you think I’m going to keep hiking round and
round and round and round the lake all day with nothing to eat? And
anyway if there was a path to the left it would run into the lake only
there isn’t any.”

“Well, probably it doesn’t run into the lake then,” Brent said.

“What are you worrying about? We can’t get lost,” Warde said to him.

“How is it going to end, that’s what _I_ want to know?” the kid shouted.

“It isn’t going to end,” I said; “it’s perpetual motion.”

Gee whiz, I had to laugh at him. He was trudging along with a scowl on
his face, and he looked kind of disgusted with all of us. The funny part
of him is that he always goes with us, and yet he keeps kicking all the
time.

“I suppose you’re going to write this up like the other crazy hikes we
took,” he said. “Everything you do you write a story about it.”

I said, “Sure, I remind myself of the Woolworth Building, I have so many
stories. Keep to the left.” He was just going to turn into a path to the
right, but I hauled him back.

We just kept on going along the path around the lake; it was awful funny
because we knew it wouldn’t get us anywhere. The kid was wild. Pretty
soon we came to the outlet of the lake (you can see it on the map), and
Hervey jumped across it, then Brent took one of those long steps of his,
very solemn, and Warde and I followed.

I don’t know how Sandwich got across, but he was waiting for us on the
other side. He acted as if he knew we were all crazy and liked it. Our
young hero tried to take a long step across and, kerflop, down he went
into the water. One good thing, it wasn’t very deep.

“Going down,” Warde said.

“If we’re going to keep going around and around this lake till we’re
all—till we’re all walking skeletons,” Pee-wee shouted, “I’m going to
put a board across that outlet.”

“Come on, keep moving,” Hervey said; “make it snappy.”

“What do you mean, snappy?” the kid screamed. “Do you think I’m going to
keep on getting wet every time just because the rest of you are
lunatics?” He looked awful funny coming along after us sputtering and
shouting, with his scout suit all wet.

“United we stand, divided we sprawl,” I told him. “Hervey’s leading; if
he doesn’t use a board the rest of us can’t.”

“Sprawl is the word,” said Brent.

“We’re not responsible for the length of your legs,” I told the kid. “If
you want to be a quitter and drop out when we get around to camp, all
right. We’re on a left-handed hike and our hike flower is the daffodil
and our slogan is _Keep going to the left_ and if we don’t get anywhere
we’re not to blame; geography is to blame, and I never had any use for
geography anyway.”

“We’ll get dizzy and go staggering into the lake, that’s what we’ll do,”
the kid yelled.

“All right,” I said, “drop in or drop out, we don’t care which you do,
only keep still. Can’t you see we’re busy hiking?”




                              CHAPTER VIII

                              FOILED AGAIN


You’ll see how it was if you look at the map. After a little while we
came around to the camp again and into Cabin Lane. A lot of scouts were
sitting on the porch of Main Pavilion laughing at us. But what cared we,
quoth I.

“Didn’t you find any path to the left?” one of them shouted.

“No, but maybe there’ll be one next time,” I said. “You never can tell.
We’ve only been around once. It’s a beautiful afternoon this morning for
an evening hike. So long, we’ll see you later. We’re busy doing our
daily good turn.”

Everybody was laughing as we went through Cabin Lane, Pee-wee coming
along behind trying to keep up with us. He was sore but he wouldn’t drop
out because he’s not a quitter, I’ll say that much for him.

When we came the second time to the outlet, Hervey made a good jump over
it. The rest of us followed, and Pee-wee went kerflop into the water
again. He climbed out shouting, “_This is the last time I’m going
around!_ Do you think I’m going to keep walking around this lake all
day?”

[Illustration: PEE-WEE CLIMBED OUT, SHOUTING, “THIS IS THE LAST TIME!”]

“Think of Columbus,” Brent said. “He didn’t turn back, he kept on going,
he sailed on and on and on——”

“That’s all right because he didn’t know where he was going,” Pee-wee
panted.

“All right then, we’re smarter than he was because we know where we’re
going,” Warde said.

“He kept going around,” Brent said. “That’s why they named Columbus
Circle after him.”

“Pee-wee is so dumb he thinks Columbus’ last name is Ohio,” I said.

Hervey didn’t say anything, just kept marching along; gee whiz, it was
funny. I don’t know how long we would have kept it up because that
fellow is crazy enough to do anything.

Pee-wee started screaming, “How long are we going to keep this up? I
said I’d go on a left-handed hike, and I meant I’d follow a trail that
goes to some different place. What’s the use of doing this? _Where is it
going to get us?_”

Brent said, “This isn’t the kind of a trail that takes you to one place
one time and another place another time. It’s a trail you can depend
on.”

“Sure, it can be trusted,” I said.

Gee whiz, I guess we’d be marching around Black Lake yet if it wasn’t
for Sandwich. He discovered a trail to the left. It was right across the
lake from the camp. We were about half-way along the opposite side of
the lake when Sandwich started sniffing the ground, and then he began
dancing around as if school had just closed. All of a sudden he started
sniffing along slantingways down toward the lake; you’ll see just how if
you look at the dotted line on the map.

“It’s a path!” Pee-wee shouted. “It goes to the left and we have to
follow it.”

“I bet it goes into the lake,” Warde said.

“Then what will we do?” I asked him.

“We’ll have to walk into the lake and swim to the left,” Brent said.
“Pee-wee couldn’t be any wetter than he is already.”

“I’m not going to walk into the lake!” the kid shouted. “That’s one
thing I won’t do. I’m good and wet, and I’m good and hungry. I got wet
twice and I haven’t eaten once and it’s near noontime and it’s all on
account of you and your crazy hike. If I have to be a lunatic I’m going
to be a dry one!”

“That’s a very good idea,” I told him.

“I’m half starved, I know that,” he shouted.

“I never knew you to be anything else,” Warde said.

As long as there wasn’t any path to the left along the trail around the
lake we decided that we would follow Sandwich and call that a trail.
Because if we hadn’t done that we would have just kept on going round
and round the lake forever—even longer maybe. We would have gone on to
eternity, that’s what Brent said.

“I’d rather go there than no place,” I told him.

“If we don’t strike eternity the first time around how do you expect to
find it the second time around?” Hervey asked.

“We should worry,” I said; “we’re on the right road now, we’re going to
bunk right into the lake.”

Well, the next thing we knew there we were right at the edge of the
lake. Across the water we could see Temple Camp and we could see the
smoke curling up from the cooking shack and we knew they were cooking
dinner over there.

“Now you see,” said Pee-wee, very sore like, “they’re cooking dinner;
they’re going to have sausages.”

“If the wind would only blow this way we could inhale our dinners,”
Warde said.

“Oh, here’s a boat,” one of us shouted.

“We’ll row across, that’s what we’ll do,” the kid said. “I’ve had enough
of left-handed hiking. We’re in luck. We don’t even have to walk the
rest of the way around.”

“It’s chained,” said Hervey, “and it’s got a big heavy padlock on it.”

“Foiled again,” I said.

We were all standing on the shore looking at the boat. I said, “It’s a
very nice boat with a bottom in it and sides to it and everything, only
it’s chained. What are we going to do next?”

Brent began sniffing and saying, “I think I can smell the sausages. The
fragrance is borne upon the gentle breeze. I think I can smell brown
gravy too. And apple dumplings. Can you sniff the apple dumplings?” I
had to laugh at him, he was so sober about it. He said, “Is that the
scent of apple dumplings, kid, or am I mistaken?”

“It smells to me like two helpings,” Warde said.

“You all make me tired!” Pee-wee shouted. “What’s the use of standing
here and sniffing like a lot of idiots? If the boat is chained we have
to go on walking around. We can get there in time for dinner if we
hurry.”

Brent said, “Alas, that can never be done. Thou knowest not what thou
sayest, Scout Harris.”

“Why don’t I knowest what I sayest?” the kid screamed.

“Because you just made a fatal move,” Brent said. “In walking around
examining the boat you passed to the _north_ of the indistinct trail
that Sandwich followed. And we, like fools, followed you. We are now
facing south as we stand here. Our honor prevents us from turning
around. Behold, Scout Harris, the little trail which brought us to the
shore is now on our _right_ instead of on our _left_. We cannot follow
it back to the main trail.

“You, and you alone, have been our undoing! We cannot move from this
spot except by entering the lake which is on our _left_, and the boat is
chained. We are marooned in fetters. We can neither hike nor row. All we
can do is sniff. And this is _your_ work!”




                               CHAPTER IX

                      THE SOUND OF MERRY LAUGHTER


                    (_My Sister Wrote That Heading_)

“Now I _know_ you’re crazy!” Pee-wee yelled. “The path back to the main
trail is on our _right_,” Brent said. “We must shun it. Our honor is at
stake.”

“Don’t talk about steaks,” Warde said.

“You’re a lot of nuts, that’s what you are!” Pee-wee yelled.

“Don’t remind me of nuts,” I said. “Our Cook’s Tour has come to an end
within sniffing distance of food. And _you_ are to _blame_!”

“Please don’t use the word cook,” Warde said.

“It shows where one false step may lead,” Brent said, very solemn-like.

“If we turn around that trail is on our left,” the kid shouted. “I never
said I wouldn’t turn around, did I?”

“We are facing the south,” Brent said.

“I’m not!” Pee-wee screamed.

“Go your way, Scout Harris,” he said, “but remember that you deserted
the left-handed hikers by turning to the right. You are taking your
first false step. We follow the path of honor.”

“Me for the _seat_ of honor,” I said. “Let’s sit down in the boat.”

“How long are we going to stay here?” the kid asked. I noticed that he
sat down in the boat with us. He isn’t a quitter, that’s one sure thing.

So then we were all sitting in the boat laughing. We all faced the same
way, south, and it made us look awful funny. If we could have rocked the
boat around so it headed the other way then the trail might have been on
our left, but the boat was fastened at both ends so there we were with
the lake to the left of us and the trail (if you call it a trail) to the
right of us and how could we get away, that was the question.

I guess you see how it was; if we hadn’t moved north of the trail and
stood facing south, we could have gone back to the main trail and kept
going round. But you see Brent caught us when the little trail was on
our right and if you don’t see I should worry because I have troubles of
my own. Anyway, there we were sitting in the boat all facing the same
way like an audience at a show.

“My honor comes first,” Brent said.

“My appetite comes next,” Pee-wee said. “How long are we going to sit
here?”

“Till doomsday,” I said.

“Till we find some way to turn to the left,” said Brent.

“One place is just as good as another, if not better,” I said; “anyway
we’re sitting down.”

“There goes the dinner horn,” Hervey said.

“Let it go,” I said, “that’s more than we can do.”

“They’re going to have clam chowder too, to-day,” Pee-wee said.

“I hear you calling me,” Brent began singing.

“We’re a lot of fools,” Pee-wee said. “All we have to do is get up and
hike around to dinner. This left-handed hike is nothing but a lot of
nonsense anyway. It’s gone far enough.”

“Sure it has,” I said. “I don’t see it going any farther.”

So then Hervey began rocking the boat and singing that crazy stuff:

       “When you go on a hike just you mind what I say,
       The right way to go is the opposite way.

       If you come to a cross-road don’t make a mistake,
       Choose a road, and the _other’s_ the one you should take.

       Don’t bother with sign boards but follow this song,
       If you start on the right road you’re sure to go wrong.

       You can go on your feet, you can go on a bike,
       But the right way is wrong when you start on a hike.”

Gee whiz, I guess we sat there about half an hour. Most of the time we
were jollying Pee-wee; that’s our favorite outdoor sport. And all the
time we were all sitting facing the same way just like an audience. We
were kind of lazy like. We felt kind of lazy and silly, I guess.

Warde said, “This is a very nice boat, I like the inside of it better
than the outside.”

“The outside of it isn’t a boat at all,” the kid grumbled.

I said, “Well, if it hasn’t got an outside how can it have an inside?
That shows how much you know about geometry.”

“Outside this boat, is that a boat?” he yelled.

“Absolutely, positively,” I said. “For goodness’ sake pick up that rag
under your feet and wash your face with it. You brought all the mud from
the bottom of the outlet along with you. You look like a mud-pie.”

“Will you keep still about pie!” he hollered. “How long are we going to
sit here like a lot of fools? Just because we made a crazy resolution——”

“Our honor is at stake,” Brent said.

“Look at Sandwich, he went home,” the kid grumbled.

“How can I look at him then?” I said. “Anyway he didn’t vow any vow.”

Then Hervey started singing:

                “We vowed a vow,
                We vowed a vow,
              And now we’re marooned on a padlocked scow.”

Pretty soon all of us were singing:

               “We’re here because we’re here,
               We cannot get away;
             The path to the left has turned to the right.
               And here we’re going to stay,
               And here we’re going to stay;
               For that’s the only way.”

All of a sudden Hervey shouted, “I’ve got an idea!” Then he pulled up
the stake that was stuck in the water near the stern of the boat. A
chain went from the boat to that stake, and there was a padlock, but it
wasn’t much good when he pulled the stake up. He said, “Ha, ha, we are
shaved, I mean saved. This alters the whole face of nature. Just a
minute and the trail will be on our left, and the hike can continue
along the same lines as before.”

“Not for me!” Pee-wee shouted. “I’m sitting here, and I’m going to stay
sitting here, I don’t care what happens!”

“Well, anyway, take that rag that’s under your feet and wash your face
with it,” I told him.

“I won’t do that either,” he said; “I’m tired of this whole business.
I’m going to stay here till I get good and rested.”

All the while we were rocking the boat so it would move around. The bow
of it was chained so the stern swung around until the boat bobbed
against the shore and was facing north instead of south, just like the
boat I made with dotted lines on the map. So you see then the little
trail was on our left. Hervey pushed the stake down into the bottom of
the lake so the boat would stay that way.

Brent said, “Thanks to Hervey Willetts now we can proceed upon our hike.
We haven’t been around much lately. Shall we hit the trail?”

“If I hit that trail as I’d like to hit it,” Pee-wee shouted.
“I’d—I’d—I’d—give it—I’d give it two black eyes——”

“It would be a blind trail,” Brent said.

“You can turn to the left and go wherever you want to,” the kid shouted.
“I’m going to sit right here in this boat, I don’t care anything about
faces of nature——”

“The least you could do would be to wash your own face,” Warde told him.

“I’ll wash my hands of you and my face too,” the kid hollered. “I’m
going to sit right here in this boat till I get good and rested, and
then I’m going around to dinner. I resign from this crazy hike and
you’re all lunatics.”

Warde said, “Those are harsh words, Scout Harris.”

The kid looked awful funny sitting there in the boat after the rest of
us got out. He just sat there with a terrible scowl on his face, and his
face was all grimy on account of falling in at the outlet. He was good
and mad.

The rest of us were standing on the shore watching him and we were just
going to start up the daffodil trail (that’s what Warde called it) and
turn to the left when all of a sudden we heard the sound of merry
laughter echoing through the woods. My sister wrote that sentence about
merry laughter echoing through the woods. I was going to write that we
heard a couple of girls giggling somewhere around, I should worry, and
that’s the end of this chapter.




                               CHAPTER X

                   THE PLOT GROWS THICKER—THE MUD TOO


Now there’s one thing about Pee-wee, he always dresses up when there are
going to be girls. He wears all his merit badges and his belt-axe so
they’ll know he’s a real hero. He’s the only original boy scout
heart-breaker. Girls always smile at him. Sometimes they even laugh out
loud.

So as soon as he heard the merry sound of girlish laughter in the
neighboring woodland (my sister wrote that) he began to listen and then
he grabbed the rag in the bottom of the boat so as to wash the dirt from
his face.

I guess he was going to dip it in the water when all of a sudden, _good
night_, there were a couple of girls coming out through the bushes. They
were laughing kind of just as if they had been spying on us, but all of
a sudden they set up a howl and the next thing I saw there was Pee-wee
jumping around in the boat and the boat was rocking about half full of
water. One of his legs was outside, and he didn’t seem to know whether
to stay in the boat or get out of it. Gee whiz, it wouldn’t have made
much difference because there was just about as much water inside as
there was outside.

“Oh, he pulled the plug out—_the rag_!” one of the girls said. “Isn’t
that too _funny_!”

“It shows you don’t know what funny means,” Pee-wee spluttered.

By that time the boat was more than half full and he was flopping around
in the water outside it. One good thing, the water was shallow but the
bottom was all mud and he was floundering around in it and lifting one
leg after the other high up trying to walk up on shore. The water was
too shallow to swim in and too deep to walk in especially on account of
the muddy bottom. Pretty soon he was on shore all covered with mud, and
the rest of us were all standing around screaming.

“He pulled the plug out, he _pulled the plug out_!” one of the girls
kept screaming—you know how they do. She said, “I never saw _anything_
so excruciating in all my _born days_!” The other girl was laughing so
hard she couldn’t say a word.

Brent said, “Fair maids, does this boat belong to you?”

One of the girls said, “Yes, does this little boy belong to you? Oh,
he’s just too funny for anything! We had a rag stuffed into a hole in
the bottom of the boat to keep the water from coming in. We’re camping
just above here. Oh, he’s simply covered with mud. You’re simply
_covered_ with mud,” she said to Pee-wee.

“Do you think I don’t know that?” he spluttered. “I—I found it out as
soon as you did.”

Brent said very sober like to the girls, “You should have had two holes
in the boat, one for the water to come in through and one for it to go
out through; then a rag would not be necessary.”

“It shows how much you know about scouting,” the kid shouted, all the
while wiping the mud from his clothes and then transferring it to his
face with his hand. “That’s just like girls, stopping a hole up with a
rag. That might have happened in the middle of the lake only it didn’t,
and I might have been drowned on account of that rag, only I wouldn’t
because I know how to swim anyway.”

“Oh, isn’t he just too cute!” one of the girls said.

“And he knows how to swim,” the other said.

I said, “Oh, he’s very smart; he knows more than his teacher, that’s why
she asks him so many questions. Even the head of the Board of Education
asked him, ‘How are things?’ He didn’t know, he had to ask Pee-wee. His
name is Pee-wee for short.”

“He’s certainly short enough,” one of the girls said.

I said, “He only looks short on account of it being such a short
acquaintance. He’ll look shorter when you’ve known him longer.”

Brent said, “You say you’re camping around here?”

“Are you doing your own cooking and everything?” Pee-wee blurted out.

“And your own eating?” I asked them.

“Yes, but we’d just _love_ to have you come and help us do it,” one of
them said.

“Which? The cooking or the eating?” Pee-wee wanted to know.

One of them said, “Dinner is all ready, we were just going to eat it
when we heard voices and we came here to see who it was. And we want you
all to come and help us eat dinner. You know scouts have to be helpful.”

“I’m helpful,” Pee-wee shouted. “I know all about it.”

“He learned about it in the third grade,” I said. “It’s derived from the
Latin word _full_ and the Greek word _help_; _helpful_ meaning full of
helpings. Anything else you’d like to ask him?”

“I’d like to ask you all if you like fish-balls?” she said.

“How many fish-balls?” Pee-wee shouted.

“Can we eat them with our left hands?” Brent wanted to know.

“They’re all crazy,” Pee-wee said, all excited.

“Not the fish-balls _we_ make,” the girl said.

“He means us,” Brent said. “We are on a left-handed hike, and we can’t
turn to the right. If the fish-balls are cooked right we can’t eat
them.”

“Don’t you pay any attention to them,” Pee-wee said, “because over in
camp everybody says they’re crazy, and they even admit it themselves.”

“Suppose some of the fish-balls are left,” one of the girls laughed.

“None of them will be,” I told her. “A scout’s word is to be trusted.
Dinner is over at Temple Camp by now so we might accept an invitation if
we were properly approached—in a left-handed manner.”

“It’ll be accepted anyway by me,” Pee-wee said; “and I’d like to know
what to call you by.”

“My name is Marjorie Eaton,” one of the girls said.

“He’ll be crazy about you,” I said; “he’s so fond of eatin’.”

“And my name’s Stella Wingate,” the other girl said.

So then Brent introduced all of us to the girls in that funny, sober way
he has and told them about our patented left-handed hike. Those girls
said they belonged down at Brookside and were just camping for the day.
If you want to go to Brookside you just row down the outlet and pretty
soon you come to it.

I said, “How far is your camp from here. And can we get to it without
turning to the right?”

Marjorie Eaton said, “I don’t see how you ever expect to get away from
the lake if you keep turning to the left; you’ll just go around and
around and around. I think you’re all too silly. You’ll just go hiking
around forever.”

Brent said, “You never can tell, they may cut a road to the left some
day while we’re going around.”

“Didn’t I tell you they’re all crazy?” Pee-wee shouted.

The other girl said, “If you _must_ go on with such a _perfectly
ridiculous_ thing, why don’t you give a broad interpretation to your
rule?”

“I’d like to give something worse than that to it,” the kid shouted.

“A broad interpretation is bad enough,” I said. “About how broad should
it be?” I asked her.

“Silly,” she said. “If you want to get away from the lake——”

“How about the fish-balls?” Pee-wee piped up.

“If you want to get away from the lake,” she said, “all you have to do
is to pull the boat up on shore and get the water out of it. As you
stand looking out on the lake the outlet is up there to the north. _It’s
to your left._ All you have to do is to row along the shore to your left
till you reach the outlet and then row through the outlet till you see a
path that leads out of it to your left. That goes to Shade Valley. How
many times have you been marching around this lake for goodness’ sake?”

Warde said, “We wouldn’t even have reached the shore if it hadn’t been
for our dog who deserted us and went home to dinner.”

“Well, he’s the only one of the party who has any sense,” Marjorie Eaton
said. Then they both began laughing.

“It’s good you came down to the shore,” the other girl said, “because
now you see you can use the boat and get somewhere without actually
breaking your rule.”

“We just have to kind of bend it a little,” I said.

“I never knew anything so stupid in my life as boys,” Stella Wingate
said.

“Especially boys who have been around so much,” Brent said.

I said, “Girls, you have saved us from being a merry-go-round; you have
shown us a way out. The outlet lets us out the same as it let Pee-wee
in. He was in that very outlet, and he never knew its possibilities.

“Possibilities!” Marjorie Eaton began laughing. “Oh, I think he’s just
_im_possible.”

They were awful nice, those girls were. They said they thought it would
be all right for us to go up to their camp and have dinner with them and
then start for the outlet in the boat. They said they thought that would
be turning to the left and that it was the only way for us to get out of
our rut. They said our resolution was all right but that sometimes a
rule has to be construed freely.

They reminded me of school when they talked. They said our only hope of
escape was by the lake. Marjorie Eaton said that otherwise we would be
the victims of an eternal circle. Gee whiz, they were smart.

“You mean an infernal circle,” I said.

Pee-wee said, “Don’t ever talk to me again about anything round; if it’s
round I have no use for it.”

“Oh, we’re so sorry,” Stella Wingate said. “Then you won’t eat any
fish-balls.”

“Eats don’t count,” the kid said.

“That’s the first time I ever heard you say that,” I told him.

So then we all went up to their camp which was about a couple of hundred
feet from the shore.

And, oh, boy, those were some fish-balls. They counted with Pee-wee all
right, but I lost count of them. Those girls said they had just decided
to take a trip into the woods for a lark.

“You can’t catch any larks around here,” our young hero said, “but there
are wild pigeons. I can tell you all about birds, I know all about
stalking.”

I said, “Don’t mind him, he’s so dumb he thinks that stalking is named
after a stork. He thinks that all the news of the birds is published in
the fly-paper.”

“Oh, he’s just stuck on the fly-paper,” Brent said.




                               CHAPTER XI

                            AN INTERMISSION


It was nice sitting there under a big tree kind of all jollying each
other and eating fish-balls. We decided that as long as we were so
comfortable we would forget about our left-handed resolution for a
little while and then go back down to the lake and row to the outlet and
take the first road to the left.

“That’s the only sensible thing to do,” Marjorie said.

“That’s what makes me think we shouldn’t do it,” I told her; “we made a
resolution to do everything wrong.”

Stella Wingate said. “Well, then, as long as you’re not supposed to be
sitting here eating fish-balls you might as well do it.”

“Sure, that’s logic,” Pee-wee said. “We can give the fish-balls a broad
interpretation, can’t we? We can construe—what d’you call it—treat them
freely.”

“Oh, most conclusively,” I said.

“Treat them as freely as you like,” Marjorie laughed.

Those girls had a lot of eats in a basket. They had crinkly paper
napkins and everything. They had some sewing with them, kind of khaki
colored stuff, I don’t know what it was. They had a couple of books,
too, that they were going to read in the afternoon. Gee whiz, they were
awful nice, those girls. Stella Wingate kept making fish-balls in a nice
little frying-pan with a wooden handle.

The basket was packed all nice like a trunk. Everything in it had
crinkly paper wrapped around it, bottles and everything. Even there were
little pinches of salt twisted in crinkly paper. There were hard-boiled
eggs in crinkly paper too. Gee whiz, everything was wrapped up just like
things around a Christmas tree. Girls are awful funny the way they do
things.

Warde said, “Left-handed hikes are all right.”

“And we’re going to have dessert,” Marjorie said. “Stella knows how to
make fish-balls, but jelly rolls are _my_ masterpiece.”

I said, “I think we’d like several pieces of masterpieces.”

She said, “Oh, they don’t come in pieces, they come in rolls. I’ll show
you how I make them.”

“We’ll show you how to eat them,” Pee-wee said.

I said, “You must excuse our young hero, he was born during a famine. He
likes thunder because it reminds him of rolls. He likes ice because it
comes in cakes. He wants to live in Greenpoint because he thinks it’s
the end of a pickle.”

“How do you make these jelly rolls?” Warde asked her.

She said, “Oh, you’ll see. They’re made of pie crust; they look like ice
cream cones only they’re filled with jam instead.”

“Yum, yum,” I said.

“How many are you going to make?” Pee-wee wanted to know.

She said, “As many as you can eat.”

I said, “Thou knowest not what thou sayest, girl.”

She said, “We’ve got a whole big bag of flour and two cans of jam, and
we’re going to make _oceans_ of them.”

“Atlantic or Pacific oceans?” Pee-wee piped up.

She said, “After lunch we always make a big boxful of them, just heaping
over, and then we just lie back and rest and read aloud and _gorge_
ourselves. We do that every Saturday. We come out in the woods and have
a perfectly _scrumptious_ time. And we don’t go home till the jelly
cones are all gone.”

Brent said, “We’d even be willing to listen to you read if you’ll let us
in on that.”

Stella Wingate said, “You’re perfectly horrid.”

Brent asked them, “Are you reading the Dolly Dimple Series?”

Marjorie said, “No, we’re not reading the Dolly Dimple Series, Mr.
Freshy. We’re reading _Treasure Island_, _so there_.”

“Jelly cones don’t go with _Treasure Island_,” I said.

“Oh, yes, they do, you’ll see them go,” Stella said.

“She’s right,” Pee-wee shouted; “because the more excited you get the
faster you eat. _Treasure Island_ is better than Dolly Dimple for eating
those things—jelly cones. And anyway scouts have to be loyal and we’ll
stick to you till they’re all gone and besides that I’ve read _Treasure
Island_ so I don’t have to listen if I don’t want to, I can just eat.
Gee, I want to see you start making them because if they’re kind of
disguised as ice cream cones I bet they’re good.”

“Listen to starving Russia,” I said. “He’s so dumb he thinks Cook’s
Tours are named after a chef.”




                              CHAPTER XII

                            GIRLS AND WASPS


All the while Hervey Willetts was lying on his back looking up in the
air and not saying anything. When he can’t be moving he’s as still as a
ghost. He was kind of kicking his hat from one foot to the other. All of
a sudden he started something—that was just like him. That fellow can
start something lying on his back. He said, “Oh, look at the wasps’ nest
up there in the tree.”

Gee whiz, you should have seen those girls jump. Right then we all
noticed that there were wasps flying around above us and in and out of
the big nest. It was a great big nest, as big as a watermelon and the
entrance to it was underneath; it was a hole about as big round as a
quarter.

Hervey said, “Give me a stick and I’ll knock it down and we’ll have a
game of football with it while we’re waiting for the jelly cones, or
whatever you call them.”

“In quest of adventure,” Brent said, “we’ve all been stung once to-day
following you and that’s enough. If you want to take it down lift it
down carefully and pour the wasps out first. Then we can take a few
kicks at it.”

Warde said, “It has kick enough in it, let it alone. It has too much of
a kick in it for me.”

Then up jumped our young hero. “You don’t catch me doing any kicking,”
he shouted.

“I’m glad to hear that; you’ve been kicking ever since we started,” I
told him.

“Shall I knock it down and see what happens?” Hervey said. It was awful
funny to see him lying there on his back and making believe to try and
reach it with his foot. All the while the wasps were flying in and out
of it and kind of hanging around the doorway.

By that time the girls were crazy, picking things up all excited and
getting ready to move away. “Come away, don’t _touch_ it; oh, don’t
_touch_ it whatever you do!” they were crying.

Marjorie Eaton knocked the lunch basket over and spilled everything out
of it, she was in such a hurry. They both started picking things up and
kept kind of edging away from the tree all the time. I had to laugh to
see how they’d sneak up on tiptoe and pick up something and then go
scooting away with it and sneak back for something else. The stuff was
all over the ground, and they crept around groping for it all the while
looking very scared-like at the tree.

Hervey didn’t pay any attention to them, just lay there on his back
looking up at the big nest. He said, “I tell you what let’s do; let’s
take it down and see how far we can roll it.”

“A game of one o’ cat would be better,” Brent said, very sober. “The
first one to knock a home run will get six jelly rolls to begin with.
Only we’ll have to bat at it left-handed.”

“Oh, absolutely, most conclusively,” I said.

“And when we run we’ll turn to the left,” Warde piped up.

“That’s understood,” Hervey said.

“I think it would be better to toss it gently,” Brent said. “I’ll lift
it down and throw it to Miss Eaton, she’ll throw it to Warde, he’ll
throw it to Miss Wingate, she’ll throw it to Pee-wee——”

“Not gently,” I said.

“By that time,” Brent said, “the wasps will be dizzy; they’ll be so
seasick that they’ll tumble right out through the hole, and we can hold
a plate of jam to catch them in. They’ll stick in the jam while they’re
in a state of como, or coma, or whatever you call it, and we’ll capture
them all by one master-stroke.”

Warde said, “You got that idea from the best way to kill flies by
hanging a slippery cord above a plate of ice cream. The fly alights on
the cord, slides off into the ice cream and freezes to death.” Brent
said, “I’ve heard of that but it’s cruel and scouts don’t use it. In the
seasick method the wasp is rendered unconscious first and he never knows
he’s dead till afterwards. He dies in the jam, an ideal death. Even
Pee-wee will admit that.”

Warde said, “I should think the wasps would be stuck on that—or in it.”

“That’s just it, they are,” Brent said. “Now, all form a circle while I
lift it down.” He made believe to reach for it and, oh, boy, I wish you
could have seen those girls run. When they got about fifty feet away
they stood hugging each other and screaming.

“By doing that you’ll only wake the wasps up,” Warde said to them. “This
is just the time they take their afternoon nap.”




                              CHAPTER XIII

                            “THE SHIVELLER”


Just then our brave young hero went up in the air. “You think you’re
smart frightening girls, don’t you!” he shouted. “Don’t you know a scout
has to be a shiveller——”

“What’s that?” I asked him.

“He has to have chivalry,” he said. “Maybe you think it’s funny
frightening girls about pouring wasps——”

I said, “It doesn’t hurt them a bit, it’s absolutely painless—endorsed
by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.”

“You mean the Society for the Prevention of Lunatics!” he yelled. “It
shows how much you know about scouting and resource and things like
that——”

Brent said, “Resource? Is that any relation to apple sauce?”

“It’s a relation to scouting,” the kid yelled.

“It’s something like cranberry sauce,” I said.

“Don’t you be afraid,” Pee-wee called to the girls; “I told you they
were crazy.”

“Oh, make them stop! Don’t let them do it!” the girls shouted. They
stood away off about fifty feet from the tree looking at it kind of
terrified. All the while wasps were buzzing around the nest and Hervey
was making believe to kick it.

“Don’t you be scared,” Pee-wee called to them, “because I know a way,
I’ve got resources, that’s more than they have; they’re only trying to
scare you.”

“Oh, don’t let them _touch_ it!” Marjorie cried. “Don’t go near it,
please, _please_ don’t! Bring the things away, and we’ll go somewhere
else—please.”

Hervey said, “If we turn that nest upside down the wasps won’t know
where they are when they come out; they’ll be lost and they’ll lose
their morale.”

Marjorie called, “Oh, no, no, _no, no_, they won’t lose it. Don’t go
near it—_please_!”

“Don’t you mind them,” Pee-wee shouted. “I know a regular scout way to
do.”

“Don’t go near it,” the girls shouted. “They’re buzzing all around!”

“You leave them to me,” Pee-wee said, very brave. “I’ll fix it.”

I didn’t know what kind of an idea he had in his head, but I thought it
must be something he had read in the Handbook or somewhere or other. He
gets his stunts direct from the factories—manufacturer to consumer. He
took three or four crinkly napkins that had blown all over the ground
and lighted them with a match. Then he began waving them around. “See
them all go in?” he shouted. “The flame scares them into their nest.”
Gee whiz, it was true, I’ll say that. All the wasps that were out beat
it for their nest as fast as they could fly. Pee-wee went dancing around
waving the paper till it began burning his hands.

“Oh, isn’t that just _wonderful_!” one of the girls called.

“That’s nothing,” said Pee-wee, all the while reaching around on the
ground; “the next thing I have to do quick; then everything will be all
safe.”

I didn’t know what he was hunting for, all I knew was he was groping
around for something.

I guess he didn’t know himself what he was groping for. He knew the
girls were watching him, and he liked himself a lot on account of being
such a hero with his resources. That’s his favorite outdoor sport, being
a hero in front of girls.

“What are you going to do now?” I asked him.

But he didn’t pay any attention only kept groping until his hand hit on
something he thought might do. I couldn’t see exactly what it was, it
looked kind of shiny. Anyway he marched boldly up to the nest and stood
on tiptoes and pushed the thing into the hole so it stuck there. “Now
they’re all in and none of them can get out,” he said; “they’re sealed
in. You can come back now, you needn’t be scared because I fixed it.”




                              CHAPTER XIV

                               HANDS OFF


“Come on back, you don’t have to be scared any more,” the kid shouted.

“Some hero,” I said.

“He’s a regular _women and children first_ scout,” Hervey said.

“Oh, they come before that with him,” said Warde.

“He charmed them with fire,” Brent said.

“They’re afraid of flame,” the kid said, very proud. “That’s something
scouts are supposed to know about. They’re supposed to know how to do
more than just talk.”

“The pleasure is ours,” I said. “You lose and we win as you usually do
if not oftener. Actions are better than words.”

By that time the two girls were coming back, very slow and careful-like.

“Are you _sure_ it’s all right?” Marjorie asked us.

“Positively guaranteed,” I said. “Sir Harris drove them before him. He’s
the only original boy scout shiveller. He shivelled them in with a
shovel of fire. He’s the pied piper of Temple Camp, named after a mince
pie. Behold the land is freed from wasps!”

The girls came back ever so careful. “Are you sure there are none
around?” they asked us. I guess they thought they could protect each
other from wasps by hanging onto each other.

Brent said, “We can now pick things up and proceed with the jelly
cones.”

“Are you sure they can’t get out?” Stella Wingate wanted to know. They
were getting a little easier in their minds, I could see that. “You are
all too silly for anything,” she said. “Pee-wee _acted_ while you
_talked_. And I believe that _you_, Mr. Hervey, or whatever they call
you, would have been just headstrong enough to knock it down. I suppose
_that’s_ what you would have called one of your _feats_.”

I said, “Sure, he’s very headstrong with his feet. How about the eats
that you were going to cook when we were rudely interrupted by the
flying corps?”

“I am going to make as many jelly cones as Pee-wee can eat, so there,”
said Marjorie. “Because he’s the hero of the day.”

“He’s the hero of every day,” Brent said, “and the nights as well. Wait
till you see him annihilate the jelly cones.”

Marjorie said, “Well, he’s going to have the chance because he deserves
it. But are you sure the wasps can’t get out?” she asked us.

“Not as long as that plug stays in,” Pee-wee said. “But if anybody took
it out——”

“Good gracious!” Marjorie said.

“We wouldn’t _touch_ it,” Stella put in, just shuddering.

“Then they’d come out good and mad,” Pee-wee said. “They’d be mad
because I circumvented them. See? But as long as it stays in there
they’re foiled.”

“Just the same as if it were sealed with tinfoil,” I told her.

“Do you all promise not to touch it?” Stella asked us.

“Because I won’t be responsible for what they do, they’re all crazy,”
Pee-wee said.

“They’ve got to _promise_,” Marjorie said. “Do _you_ promise, Mr. Hervey
Headstrong?” she asked.

“Why pick on _me_?” Hervey asked her, all the while lying on his back
with his hands behind his head, kind of careless like.

She said, “Because you have a look in your eye. I just feel you’re going
to do something _tragic_. I can just _feel_ it in my _bones_. Girls are
good at reading characters. I know your type.”

“Make Roy Blakeley promise,” Pee-wee said, all the while strutting
around very important, sort of, “because he’s the worst of the lot.”

Marjorie Eaton said, “Mr. Tall Boy with the spectacles, will you give
your solemn word of honor——”

“As a scout,” Pee-wee shouted.

“As a scout,” Marjorie said, “will you give your solemn word of honor
and cross your heart and hope to die that _none_ of these boys will
_touch_ that wasps’ nest—will you?”

“Why pick on me?” Brent said.

“Because you have spectacles and I _feel_ that you’re honorable—I just
_feel_ it,” she said. “Will you promise for all of them including
Willis, or whatever that crazy boy’s name is who lies on his back, will
you promise that not _a single, solitary one of you_ will touch that
wasps’ nest? Because I won’t make a single jelly cone till you do.”

“Make him raise up his hand in the scout salute and promise,” said
Pee-wee. “Because I know that bunch; I’ve been out with them before.”

Brent said, “Will you girls promise to make as many jelly rolls as we
can eat in half an hour?”

She said, “Why, _of course_ we will, we’ve got oceans of flour.”

“Then we agree,” he said. “On behalf of the Boy Scouts of Temple Camp we
pledge ourselves one and all separately and collectively——”

“And unanimously,” Pee-wee shouted. “Make ’em do it unanimously.”

“And conclusively and finally,” Brent said, “and thoroughly and
left-handedly.”

“No, not left-handedly,” Pee-wee shouted. “I had enough of that.”

“We promise,” Brent said. “No scout hand shall touch that wasps’ nest.
It shall remain as it is, a monument to the resourcefulness and heroism
of P. Harris.”

“Now will you start to cook the jelly cones?” Pee-wee wanted to know.
“Because, gee whiz, I’ve heard so much about them, and anyway I’m good
and hungry, so will you start making them—pretty soon?”

Brent said, very calm like, “I have no intention of touching yonder
nest. I would not tamper with the handiwork of Scout Harris. I have but
one thought now and that is to see him circumvent jelly cones as he
circumvented wasps. But just for information I would like to
inquire—perhaps you girls would be willing to step a little closer—I was
wondering what that tin thing is that our hero used to plug up the
hole.”

“_Oh, it’s the thing we make the cones with!_” cried Stella Wingate.
“Look, Marjorie, _see what he did_! He put the cone maker into the
wasps’ nest! How in the world are we ever going to make jelly cones
now?”

“Ask P. Harris,” Hervey said; “a scout is resourceful.”




                               CHAPTER XV

                                 STUNG


I said, “Excuse me while I fall in a faint.” I just fell on the ground
and buried my face in my hands. The next thing I knew Warde was lying
beside me suffering from shock. I said, “The fixer has fixed it.”

Pee-wee just stood staring. “You make me tired,” he shouted. “Do you
mean to say I can’t take that out——”

“Oh, absolutely, positively not,” I said; “a scout’s honor——”

“It’s just a what d’you call it—a teckinality,” he shouted. “If they
have to have that thing——”

“Oh, we _don’t_, we _don’t_!” the girls began crying. “Don’t touch it
whatever you do! Remember your promise! Don’t go near it!”

I jumped up and I said, “Girls, a scout’s honor is to be trusted. The
deed is did. The jelly cone maker stays in the wasps’ nest. Who cares
for jelly cones? Our honor is the only thing that counts. You can depend
on us, girls. We are boy scouts. The fixer has fixed it, and it will
stay fixed.”

“Is the little tin cone very necessary?” Brent asked them.

Marjorie said, “Oh, yes; you see we wrap the pie crust around it, that
makes it into a cone shape, you know. Then we push it off carefully and
stand it in a pan, a hot pan——”

“Mmm, yum, yum,” I said.

“And leave it in the oven till it’s nice and hard and crisp,” Marjorie
said. “Then we fill them with jam; they’re perfectly delicious. Of
course, we make a lot of them and stand them up in the pan and let them
crisp all at once. They really ought to be left in till they’re brown.
Oh, I’m so sorry you can’t try them. Isn’t it exasperating? When you see
them crisping in the pan they look like a lot of little tents—like an
encampment. A friend of ours, Sophronia Simpe, invented them. We just
come out here in the woods and _gorge_ ourselves with them every
Saturday.”

Warde said, “Well, I guess this will be an off Saturday. We’re sorry,
but we made a promise and, as Pee-wee very truthfully remarked, the
wasps are good and mad by now and if we pulled that little tin wedge
out——”

“Oh, we wouldn’t have you to do it for _worlds_.” Stella said. “Do you
think we want to be overwhelmed with wasps?”

“Oh, positively not; say not so,” I said. “Not after our brave young
hero sealed them up so nicely. They must be pretty mad by now.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t take any chances with them,” Brent said.

“Safety first,” Hervey said. “Let them rage; we’re safe.”

Then, all of a sudden, Pee-wee went up in the air. “Now I know you’re
all crazy,” he said. “Do you mean to tell me that tin wedge or whatever
you call that thing, can’t be pulled out very quietly——”

“And break a solemn vow?” Brent asked him. “How about a scout’s honor?”

“You make me tired!” he yelled. “It shows how much you know about
physics, I mean ethics, I mean about how a thing can be all right if
when you first said it, it wasn’t why you didn’t know how it was going
to turn out.”

“It’s as clear as shoe-blacking,” I said. “Why didn’t you explain all
that before?”

“Because you’re a lot of crazy lunatics!” he shouted. “I’m going to take
that thing out——”

“Have a care, Scout Harris,” I said. “Stand back; our honor is more
important than a thousand jelly cones. You shall not pass.”

All the while the girls were jumping around telling us not to let him
and crying and starting to run away—you know how they are.

I don’t know whether we would have had any jelly cones that afternoon if
it hadn’t been for Hervey Willetts. All the while he was lying there on
his back not paying much attention to us. All of a sudden he grabbed
some leaves that were on a low branch. I guess he didn’t mean to break
his promise. But anyway down came the wasps’ nest kerplunk right on him
and out flew the little tin wedge. Gee whiz, that fellow was quick. In
about half a second he had his leather wristlet against the hole.

By that time the girls were hiding behind a tree about twenty feet away
and screaming. Pee-wee was making a grand scramble for the cone form or
whatever you call it, and the rest of us were laughing. There was Hervey
hugging the big nest and holding his leather wristlet tight against the
opening. He tried to get up with the nest in his arms and it was awful
funny to see him because he didn’t have the use of one arm.

“What’ll I do with it?” he asked us.

“We should worry what you do with it,” I said. “Carry it around with you
all afternoon, only for goodness’ sake don’t take your wrist away from
the opening. I bet they’re all just crowding inside the entrance to see
which one of them can be the first out.”

Hervey said, “I wouldn’t mind so much being stung by one wasp, but I
don’t like the idea of hugging this thing for the rest of my life. My
arm’s beginning to ache, too. I can hear a buzzing inside.”

I said, “Hang on to it, the plot grows thicker.”




                              CHAPTER XVI

                              JELLY CONES


The way we fixed it was to cut a piece of birch bark off a tree and slip
it between Hervey’s wristlet and the nest. Then we fastened it down
tight and bound it all around every which way with fishline.

One wasp got out, but he didn’t do any harm. He seemed to be in a hurry,
so we didn’t bother him. Then we threw the nest out into the lake. We
thought that by the time it got out into the middle of the lake the
water would melt it, and the wasps would escape. Anyway, I should worry
about them.

The girls didn’t calm down till we told them that the nest had started
on a voyage. Then we kindled up the fire for them and they started
making jelly cones. There are lots of things you eat, but jelly cones
are the kind of things you keep on eating. You just keep on making them
and eating them. Oh, boy, they were good.

It was so nice sitting around under that tree that we stayed pretty near
all afternoon. Those girls were starting a Camp-fire Girls troop. They
said a girl in Brookside had started it. Her name was Sophronia Simpe.
They told us a lot about her. They said she had lived on a ranch out
west and had ridden wild broncos and everything. She could even throw a
lasso. They said once she fell off a wild horse.

Warde said, “Are you sure it wasn’t a clothes-horse?”

She said, “No, it wasn’t a clothes-horse, Freshy.”

I said, “Once our young hero fell off a merry-go-round horse; that’s why
he doesn’t care to go around much any more. Ever since then he’s been on
the square. He thinks when he goes around he’s doing a good turn.”

Stella Wingate said to Pee-wee, “Don’t you mind them, they’re only
making fun of you.”

“I could handle them all,” Pee-wee said, “if I wasn’t busy eating.”

So, then they began asking us about the scouts and about the kind of
good turns we do and all that. It was nice sprawling around and eating
jelly cones and just talking. You can have a lot of fun doing nothing.

Marjorie Eaton said, “What kind of good turns do you do?”

I said, “Well, to give you an instance——”

“You got that out of a book,” Pee-wee shouted. “_Just to give you an
instance._ You don’t know what it means.”

I said, “As I was about to say when I was rudely interrupted, once I
knew a poor family that were starving because they didn’t have any
coal——”

“You don’t eat coal!” Pee-wee shouted.

Marjorie said, “Yes, what kind of a good turn did you do?”

I said, “I stuck out my tongue and made faces.”

“That shows——” Pee-wee started.

I said, “I went over to the coal-yard where the men were unloading coal
from the Drearie Railroad. I took a pail with me. It was enamel, all
nice and white. That’s why it was called pale—shut up everybody——”

“Did I say anything?” Pee-wee hollered.

“No, but you were going to,” I said. “I took the pail over to the
coal-yard and started calling names at the men and sticking out my
tongue at them and making faces. Then the men began throwing coal at me
and pretty soon I had a pailful. So, then, I took it to the poor family.
And that shows how a few hard names and ugly faces can bring much
happiness. But the trouble with Pee-wee is that he can never stick out
his tongue because it’s too busy.”

Stella Wingate said, “Really?”

“Absolutely, positively,” I said. “I can tell you lots of good turns
that we did.”

“Don’t you believe a word he’s telling you!” Pee-wee shouted.

“Don’t believe _him_,” I said. “He’s so dumb he’s named after a
dumb-waiter. He thinks that a somersault is a good turn.”

By that time everybody was laughing because they like to see Pee-wee and
me in a mortal come-back—I mean combat.

“Wait till I finish this jelly cone and I’ll tell you something,” the
kid shouted, all excited. “When I was trying to win the stromeny—wait a
minute—badge——”

“He means the astronomy badge,” Warde said.

“Sure,” I said. “He’s so dumb he thinks Warde is named after Ward’s
cake. When he was trying for the astronomy badge he thought William S.
Hart was a shooting star because he’s always aiming a couple of
pistols.”

_“That shows——_” Pee-wee started.

“He’s always thinking about shows,” Warde said.

I said, “To show you how dumb he is, when he didn’t win the first aid
badge he said he was going to try for the second aid badge. When he was
trying for the life saving medal he thought a daring feat couldn’t be
performed with his arms. He thought only colored scouts could try for
the blacksmith badge. And to show you——”

“Hurry, before he finishes the jelly cone he’s eating,” Brent said. “I
can feel the earth shaking under me.”

“You’ve only got about five seconds,” Hervey said to me.

Gee whiz, it was a race with Pee-wee’s mouth. He was getting the jelly
cone out of the way to start a converted attack, or a concerted attack,
or whatever you call it.

“Give him another one—quick,” I said. Marjorie handed him a couple of
cones to keep him busy; she was laughing so hard she couldn’t speak.

I said, “Just to show you how dumb he is, he thinks that a Star Scout is
one who has won the astronomy badge. He thinks that the Raven Patrol
that he’s in is named after him, because he’s always raving; I’ll leave
it to Brent.”

Brent said, “Alas, it’s true. All joking aside, an Eagle Scout came from
Brooklyn last summer——”

“I don’t blame him,” Hervey said.

“That’s neither here nor there,” Brent said.

“_Where is it then?_” Pee-wee yelled.

Brent said, “The point is, our young hero thought that the youth in
question won the Eagle award by reading the _Brooklyn Daily Eagle_—and
that isn’t all.”

“I never knew that,” Warde said.

“It was common talk in camp,” Brent said. “But the worst is yet to
come.”

“You’d better hurry up,” I said.

“There isn’t another cone left,” Stella sang out.

Brent said, “But all joking aside——”

“Which side?” Hervey asked him.

“To the left,” I said.

“The left side, of course,” Brent said. “All joking to the left——”

But that was as far as he got. Just then our young hero took the floor,
I mean the ground. Already he had taken most of the jelly cones.

I said, “Stand aside, everybody.”

“That shows you that they’re all crazy!” Pee-wee screamed. “Not only
they walk left-handed but they talk left-handed. They’d be tramping
around the lake yet if it wasn’t for a couple of girls. And Roy Blakeley
he writes all this crazy stuff up and has his picture on the cover of a
lot of books and you girls will be in the stories, too—you see. But over
in camp everybody says his whole patrol ought to be named the laughing
hyenas; they’re so crazy that they jolly themselves when they haven’t
got anybody else to jolly and they think it’s fun to tell a new
tenderfoot to go out in the woods and see if he can hear the birch bark
and invite a new troop up to their cabin and tell them there’s going to
be a racket up there and then show them a tennis racket and they told a
little fellow that wanted to play tennis where he could find a racket
and they told him to come where I was if he wanted a racket, because I
made rackets, and even Mr. Allison says that sometimes; they go too
far——”

“That’s why we just kept going round and round the lake this time,” I
said. “Sometimes we go entirely too near; you as much as admitted it
yourself.”




                              CHAPTER XVII

                            ANCIENT HISTORY


Marjorie Eaton said, “Can you be serious for five minutes?”

“How long?” Warde asked her.

She said, “Long enough to tell us something about the scouts.”

“You want a serial story about them?” Brent asked her.

“We want a serious story about them,” she said.

“That’s different,” I said. “Do you like pirate stories about them?
Because there is buried treasure hidden in Black Lake. That’s no joke,
it’s true—absolutely, posilutely. There’s a tin box at the bottom of
Black Lake containing about three hundred dollars. The people that
started Temple Camp sank a lot of money in the enterprise. We have
buried treasure and everything else at Temple Camp.”

“You’re fooling,” Stella Wingate said.

I said, “A scout’s honor is to be toasted; it’s positively true. There’s
a diagram in Administration Shack telling where it is—or isn’t, I don’t
know which.”

Just then Brent Gaylong kind of touched me on the shoulder and I could
see that he winked at Pee-wee and Warde. He kind of put his arm over my
shoulder and led me away and said, “For goodness’ sake, don’t start that
buried treasure stuff, Roy. You’ll have Hervey diving in the middle of
the lake for it. You know how he is.”

“He must know about it,” I said.

“I don’t think he does,” Brent said. “Anyway, you know Tom Slade and
Uncle Jeb and the trustees want the fellows to forget about it. Whatever
you do don’t get Hervey started on that, whether he knows about it or
not. You know he can’t obey instructions, he just can’t, he’s built that
way.

“The first thing you know he’ll be drowning himself or getting himself
dismissed from camp and we’ll be to blame. It’s like waving a red flag
in front of him. Nix on the buried treasure stuff; there’s plenty of fun
without that. I’m sorry you mentioned the diagram.”

“All right,” I said, “let it go at that. I was just trying to get the
girls interested.”

He said, “Well, let’s get them started on something else.”

“Suits me,” I said; “one subject is as good as another if not better.
I’m sorry I put my foot in it.”

“No harm done,” he said, “only let’s not follow it up. The buried
treasure is buried; let’s not follow it up.”

“You mean follow it down,” I said. “It’s not troubling my innocent young
life, I know that.”

That’s the way it is with Brent, he’s always thinking about what’s best
for other fellows. And, gee whiz, he knows Hervey Willetts like a book.
He was always a good friend to Hervey. Lots of times Hervey would have
gotten into trouble with his recklessness if it hadn’t been for Brent.
Tom Slade and the trustees liked Hervey well enough and they admitted he
was brave and reckless. But they were kind of sore at him because they
couldn’t manage him, and, gee whiz, you couldn’t blame them. Hervey was
kind of on the outs at camp except with just us few fellows and that’s
why he stuck with us.

Now I’ll tell you about the buried treasure—that’s what we always called
it. It was a kind of a joke till little Skinny McCord nearly got drowned
trying to fish it up. Then the trustees said we should all forget it.
They put a notice on the bulletin board that there should be no more
fishing for it.

That was two summers ago. It was before Hervey ever came to Temple Camp.
It was only just kind of like ancient history when he got there. I had
forgotten all about it because I have no use for ancient history
anyway—that and civil government.




                             CHAPTER XVIII

                          A STORY OF THE PAST


Now this is the story about the buried treasure. After the big fire at
Temple Camp three years ago (that’s when I was a tenderfoot, but I
wasn’t so awful tender) a lot of carpenters were working putting up new
buildings at camp.

They built the cooking shack (that’s Pee-wee’s favorite building) and
the diving board (that’s my favorite building) and the observation tower
(that’s Hervey’s favorite building because he’s always on the top of it
taking chances and observations).

They built the new Administration Shack too. That’s where the library
and the mail office are and it’s where the managers stay and it’s where
all the office business is. There are lots of pictures in there and
portfolios with maps in them and everything. One thing I don’t like
about it, it’s got a rug on the floor.

One day—it was on a Saturday—Mr. Carson (he’s a trustee) and another man
who was a scoutmaster, went to Catskill to get the money out of the bank
to pay the workmen. They always brought it in a tin box. So now you
better look at the map.

Instead of coming around to camp by the trail they rowed across the
lake. They started from a willow tree up near the outlet. That was where
they had left the boat on the way down to Catskill. You’ll see that
tree. The reason why they didn’t go around by the trail was because on
account of the mud. It had been raining all the time for about a week
and the trail was bad, especially in the woods. There were great big
puddles in the woods like young lakes.

That afternoon when they came back it was very dark and while they were
coming across the lake toward camp all of a sudden a thunder-storm
started. Gee whiz, I can remember it because we were helping to pile up
lumber at the new landing, and the wind blew over a pile of boards. We
were just scooting for the pavilion when all of a sudden Worry Aiken (he
was in a troop from Vermont), he shouted, “_Look at the boat! Look at
the boat! Look at the boat!_”

Oh, boy, I’ll never forget what we saw. The boat was about maybe two or
three hundred feet from the shore where the willow tree is. It was so
dark and the water was so all churned up like that we couldn’t see very
plain. But anyway it seemed to me the boat was upside down.

I know one thing, I had a funny kind of a feeling, gee, I can’t tell you
about it, but I felt as if maybe I would see something later that I
didn’t want to see. It felt all kind of, you know, sort of like when
you’re in an elevator and it stops suddenly.

The next thing I saw, a figure crawled up on the shore away over on the
other side. A scout said, “_Look!_” That was when I first saw it. It
looked black and low down like an animal. Then it seemed to stay still.

I said, kind of whispered, I was so scared, “I don’t see the boat any
more.”

Garry Everson (he comes from down the Hudson), he said, “It’s there,
look where the light is—just this side of the light.”

Then I could see it. It was upside down. You could hardly tell it from
the water. There wasn’t anybody near it that I could see. Besides, I
couldn’t see the person on the shore any more. I felt as if pretty soon
I would hear of something terrible.

Once in my class room a pupil had a kind of an attack on account of his
heart, and they carried him out. And they said we should go on with our
lessons, but anyway it seemed kind of funny and afterwards we found out
he was dead. So kind of that’s the same way I felt that afternoon.

In about half a minute all the camp was down at the lake and everybody
was excited. Most all the kids were told to go in the pavilion. Tom
Slade had a big oilcloth hat, rubber boots and a lantern. He looked kind
of like a picture of a fisherman or a captain on a boat or something. It
kind of gave me thrills to see him because, gee whiz, that fellow always
knows what he’s about.

I guess everybody knew what it meant. Mr. Whittaker (he’s a trustee)
called through the big megaphone, but there wasn’t any answer from
across the lake.

Then several men started around by the trail—Tom Slade and Mr. Whittaker
and Uncle Jeb Rushmore, he’s manager. Some scouts started after them,
but they were chased back. We stood on the porch of the commissary shack
(you can see where that is) watching. Every now and then we could see
the light from Tom Slade’s lantern as they picked their way along the
trail through the woods.

I guess it was about two hours before they came back. We just stood
around waiting for them. When they came, Uncle Jeb and another man were
carrying something on a canvas stretcher. That was Mr. Carson, and he
was unconscious. Mr. Kennekott, the man who had gone with him, was
drowned. He had got underneath the boat when it turned over and one of
his legs had been caught underneath the seat. Even when Mr. Carson was
better he didn’t know how he’d got to shore.

After what happened the boat was blown out into the middle of the lake,
and some of them went out in another boat and towed it to the landing.
They found Mr. Kennekott caught underneath it. His leg was between the
middle seat and the floor. That seat was very low. The tin box with the
money must have gone down where the boat upset.

There wasn’t much fun at Temple Camp after that. It was a kind of an off
summer anyway on account of the camp being sort of rebuilt. Mr.
Kennekott’s troop went away, and they have never come back to Temple
Camp. Jiminies, you can’t blame them. They were a nice troop, those
fellows. One of them had the bronze medal—he sat next to me at eats.

The camp officials dragged the lake over on the other side, but they
never found the box. Mr. Temple, who founded the camp, he said they
shouldn’t worry. So that was the end of it except after a while scouts
began fishing for the box. Lots of them did that. They kidded themselves
that they were treasure hunters, I guess. I never did because it always
reminded me of what happened.

Of course, it was too deep to dive over there, and there was a strict
rule against that. Because I’ll tell you why. There used to be houses
where Black Lake is and in some places old chimneys and things like that
stood on the bottom. And there’s a rule that we can only dive near the
landing. After a while the trustees made a rule that we shouldn’t even
go over there and grapple for the box. That was after little Skinny
McCord nearly got drowned. So that was the end of the whole thing.

Most of the scouts that were at camp that year don’t come now and, gee
whiz, you hardly hear anybody speak about it any more. It just happened
to pop out of my head when we were talking with those girls.

Now there’s one thing more I’ll tell you. You remember how one of the
scouts said the boat was near a light? When he was pointing it out to
me? That was only the reflection of a light away up on the mountain.

There were two grown-up fellows who had a camp up in the mountain across
the lake from Temple Camp. Often we saw their camp-fire at night. They
had it burning that afternoon way, way up there. And it made a spot of
light down on the lake. It was right close to that spot of light that
the boat upset. That was what the fellow meant. It wasn’t really a
light, it was only a reflection. That summer those big fellows up in the
mountain went away, and they never came back again. Gee whiz, you can’t
exactly say that the reflection of a light is a scout sign. Because when
the light goes away the reflection goes away, too.

So, after a while nobody seemed to know just where the boat upset. The
scouts who were there that summer knew. But after that it was a kind of
a—you know—a legend, sort of. I guess the trustees were glad of that
because scouts couldn’t go grappling any more.

It was all nice and forgotten, sort of, when all of a sudden last
summer, Harry Donnelle came to see us at Temple Camp. He’s a big fellow
and he lives near me and he’s especial friends with my sister, only she
says I have to cross this part out, but I won’t do it. That fellow was
in the war, and he just didn’t get killed as many as four times. He’s
been in South Africa, too. His middle name is adventure. Gee whiz, I
hope he marries my sister.

Anyway he heard about that accident because birds come and whisper
things to him, that’s what he says. Believe me, I think they shout at
him. Anyway he found out. So one dark, gloomy afternoon he took three of
us up to that old camp, and he made a couple of other fellows row around
in a boat down on the lake.

They built a big fire up at the old camp in the mountain and then the
fellows in the boat noticed just where the reflection hit the water.
Then they made a kind of a diagram on a map of the lake that showed just
exactly where the boat upset. First they tried to drive a pole in, but
the lake was too deep. So then they made notes on the map and dotted
lines and everything that showed that the spot was in a line exactly
southeast of the willow tree, I don’t know how far.

Gee whiz, there were going to be big doings next day—but that was the
end of it. And I guess the trustees were glad of it. That very same
night away went Harry Donnelle to Hudson Bay—he got a telegram, that’s
all I know. He forgot all about the buried treasure. Mr. Temple said
that was just like him. All he wanted was the fun of the thing. I bet
the trustees were glad when he went away. He sent me a post card from a
trading station in Hudson Bay. It had a picture of trappers on it and
everything and he didn’t say anything about this fine diagram. When he
came back he brought my father a bull moose’s head.

I never saw that diagram, and I should worry about it, that’s what I
said. Because anyway the money didn’t belong to me. I always heard it
was in a big portfolio with a lot of other maps and things in
Administration Shack. I guess they kept it as a kind of a curiosity.

Anyway nobody ever said anything about it. The buried treasure was dead
and buried and we should worry about it because, believe me, there’s
plenty to do at Temple Camp these days without going fishing with
grappling irons. I’d rather be jollying Pee-wee than doing that.




                              CHAPTER XIX

                           WE MEET A STRANGER


I just thought I’d tell you about it so you’ll know. But I wasn’t
strolling around with Brent as long as it took to tell it. In a couple
of minutes we were back.

He said, “Whatever you do don’t start that stuff with Hervey around.
First thing you know he’ll be getting himself in trouble. He’s just
about due for a new mix-up with the management.”

I said, “You’re a nice one to be talking that way; you were with Harry
Donnelle all the time he was up here.”

He said, “Yes, but now I have to mind the baby.”

“All right,” I told him; “what you say goes.”

From the looks of things it seemed as if none of the others had talked
about it, not even Pee-wee. He’s a wise little dumb-bell, I’ll say that
for him. So it was all right—for the time being.

After a little while we said good-bye to the girls and started off again
on our left-handed hike. They went down to the shore with us and waited
while we fixed the boat up and put another plug in the bottom. It was a
wooden one. We don’t mind poverty, but rags we can’t stand—not in the
flooring of boats.

Warde said, “We want to know where the lake is, inside the boat or
outside. We want it to be one place or the other.”

Stella Wingate said, “If you were sea scouts you’d know that some kind
of a rag is necessary on _every_ boat in case you want to fly a signal
of distress.”

“Sure,” I said; “every time you wave your signal the boat sinks. You
might as well take the rag without the boat when you’re sailing; that’s
logic.” Brent said, “That’s a very good suggestion.” The girls said they
were sorry to see us go. I told them to look the other way, and they
wouldn’t see it. They said we seemed to have a lot of fun. Brent was
awful funny. He shook hands with them very sober like and he said,
“There was a sameness in our lives till we met you. Life was just one
thing over and over again.”

“And under,” I said. “Don’t forget our young hero.”

“You girls changed the whole course of our lives,” Warde said. “You have
helped us to get somewhere in life. But we don’t know where.”

They said, “Well, you’d better be starting or you’ll _never_ get back to
your camp. If you turn to the left at Brookside it will take you
straight to Greenvale. There you’ll find the first road to your left and
if you take that it will take you into Fox Trail that goes to the left
and that will bring you around this lake into the trail you’ve been
trying to get away from. So you can keep your resolution and get back to
your camp all right.”

Brent said, “That’s just what we want, to get back into the trail we
want to get away from.”

Marjorie Eaton said, “There’s a carnival at Greenvale, too.”

“Can we get sodas there?” Pee-wee wanted to know.

Marjorie laughed and said, “Yes, but I _think_ the soda booth is on the
right-hand side of the road.”

“Foiled again,” I said.

So then we started. We rowed along the shore toward the outlet. When we
came near to the outlet there was the willow tree I told you about.
Right near it stood a young fellow close to the shore. He was looking at
us and kind of waiting.

The thing I noticed most about him was his eyes, because I couldn’t see
them. That was on account of his hat. One good thing, he had a nose
because that prevented his hat from falling down over his face. The
front of his hat rested right on his nose. He was a kind of a grown-up
fellow. His trousers were funny, they were tight at his knees, and then
they changed their mind and got wider down near the ground. He had on
low shoes—to match his brow, that’s what Brent said. Warde said, “Oh,
look at the sharpy.”

“Is that what you call a cookie nibbler?” Brent wanted to know.

I said, “Sure it is, it’s a regular one. They’re so stingy they wear
their hats down in front to save their eyesight.”

“I didn’t know there were any of them running wild around here,” Brent
said. “Is it against the law to shoot them?”

Jiminy, that cake-eater looked awful funny. He was a rare specimen, kind
of. His jacket was long, and it had slanting pockets in it. I don’t know
why they have pockets at all, those fellows. They carry crumbs instead
of dough, that’s what I heard. He had a kind of a shoe-lace disguised as
a necktie.

Brent said, “I wonder where he spends his time.”

“It’s about the only thing he does spend,” I said. “I’ve seen that
fellow before, I think he’s staying in Brookside. He goes to the dances
in Leeds and Catskills and Athens; I’ve seen him all over. He stands in
front of Bartlett’s store down in Catskill. He’s a he-hopper. Those
fellows let girls pay their own carfare.”

Brent said, “They allow them on street cars then?”

“Let’s row in and speak to him,” Warde said; “they’re tame, most of
them; they’re harmless except when you feed them cake.”

“Sure,” I said; “let’s row in. He’ll talk to us. Why shouldn’t he? Talk
is cheap.”




                               CHAPTER XX

                             A RARE SPECIES


We rowed close in shore near the outlet and the sharpy spoke to us
first. We rested on our oars a minute to talk with him. He had a funny
kind of a lisp in the way he talked. Not exactly a lisp, but sort of
like it.

He said, “Are there any eels around here?” I suppose he wanted to be
introduced to them.

Warde said, “I guess there are, but I don’t know whether they dance or
not.”

He didn’t seem to mind that. He just said, “I heard there were eels in
here. It’s deep farther out from shore, isn’t it?”

I said, “Sure it is, it’s what they call the perch-hole right out there.
I guess there are eels, too, but we never bother with them.”

He kind of waited a minute, then he said, “That’s about where the
accident was, isn’t it? When the man got drowned?”

“Good night,” I said to myself, “the cat is out of the bag.”

Hervey said, “There have been four or five accidents.” By that I knew he
wasn’t thinking especially about any particular one.

Brent said, “Yes, out there somewhere. There have been several drownings
in the lake.”

We were just going to start to row away when the fellow said, “They ever
find the tin box?”

“Not as I know of,” Brent said.

“A chap in Brookside was telling me about it,” the sharpy said. “’Bout
three hundred bucks, I hear. They ever take any steps to get it?”

“Can you beat that?” I whispered to Brent. “Right away he’s thinking of
new steps to take.”

I said out loud, “Why don’t you go to the dance in Leeds to-night? They
take lots of steps there.”

He didn’t get mad. He just said, “I should think you chaps would have
found it.”

I said, “We should fret our young lives about it. I guess the eels have
spent it all by now.”

He said, “You chaps must be a pretty slow crowd. I hear there’s a map
telling just where it is and everything. Why don’t you try your luck
some time or other? It wouldn’t cost you anything.”

I whispered to Brent, “That’s why it appeals to him. Those fellows are
so cheap they won’t live anywhere except in a free country.”

Brent gave me a look to say I should keep still. Then he said, “Who’s
been telling you fairy tales?”

“What do you mean, fairy tales?” the strange fellow asked.

“Oh, about maps and all that,” Brent said.

It seemed to me as if the fellow was sorry he had said that about maps.
He just said, “Oh, I don’t know, you hear a lot about Temple Camp all
over. It’s the big show around here.”

“Even in Europe they heard of us,” Pee-wee shouted. “It’s been in the
movies how we have pow-wows and war dances and things.”

“Do you have them every week?” the sharpy asked us.

“You mean the dances?” Brent said. “Sure, drop over some time.”

I said, “We have them every Friday and a week from Wednesday. We always
wind up with an Indian dance named after the Indian motorcycle. We
always have a St. Vitus’ dance to close the season.”

He just looked at us, I guess he didn’t know what to make of us. He
looked kind of as if he was trying to make out if we really had dances
over there. He said, “How do you get over there? Follow the trail
around?”

“Sure,” Warde said. “Either way it takes you right there.”

He just stared at us vacant like and fixed his collar all nice with his
left hand. “Any Janes?” he asked us.

[Illustration: “ANY JANES?” HE ASKED US.]

“You said it,” Warde told him.

“You got a dance floor?” he wanted to know. I said, “No, we dance right
on the grass. It’s the latest craze; we’re known as grass-hoppers.
Didn’t you ever hear of the rubber band? They furnish the music.”

Gee whiz, he didn’t seem to be mad at all. And he didn’t laugh either. I
guess he was really sorry thinking that maybe there were some dances
that he missed. Maybe he was sorry that he could only go to one at a
time.




                              CHAPTER XXI

                           THIRTY-FOUR CENTS


We left him standing near the tree and started rowing through the
outlet. The right name of the outlet is Dawson’s Creek, but we always
call it the outlet. By that time it was late in the afternoon, and Warde
said if we were going to hike around the way the girls had said we ought
to telephone to camp.

I said, “We can telephone when we get to Brookside.”

“Well, let’s not forget to do it,” Brent said.

“What about that tin box at the bottom of the lake?” Hervey asked.

“I thought so,” Brent said, kind of laughing. “Forget it. Nobody knows
where it is. Maybe it isn’t.

“The fellow said it had money in it,” Hervey said. “It’s not drawing any
interest down there.”

Brent said, “Well, it’s not supposed to be attracting any interest up
here either, so forget it. There are nuts all over the country hunting
for Captain Kidd’s treasure.”

“I’d like to dive for that,” Hervey said.

“Oh, I suppose you would,” Warde told him. “You know there’s no diving
allowed away from the springboard. I’ll tell you where the tin box is if
you want to know; it’s in your head.”

“It’s in the sharpy’s head too,” I said.

Brent said, “Well, there’s plenty of room there for it. Let it stay
there.”

“He said something about a map,” Hervey went on.

“It’s going to be a nice moonlight night,” Brent said.

“How do you suppose he knows about that?” Hervey asked.

“How do we know?” I said. “I suppose he heard some talk somewhere.”

“Maybe he knows more than he said,” piped up Pee-wee; “it’s kind of
mysterious. Maybe he’s a confederate of somebody, maybe. Maybe he had a
partner hiding. I bet he knows a lot.”

“Sure,” I said, “partners is his middle name.”

“Knows a lot is good,” said Brent laughing.

“I’d like to make a try for that,” Hervey said. “It would be some
stunt.”

“Are we going to take the first road to the left?” Brent asked. “Or are
we going to call it off and go back to camp?”

“Answered in the affirmative,” I shouted. After that nothing more was
said about the accident and the tin box. I guess we all saw that Brent
wanted us to drop the subject.

Hervey was busy trying to swing up into the branches of trees as we
passed through the outlet, so I guess he wasn’t thinking much about that
business either. It’s nice and dim in the outlet because the trees reach
all the way across it and in some places you can’t even see the sky. Two
or three times we had to backwater so as to take Hervey in again where
he was hanging from some tree or other. Once he hung upside down by his
feet. One place we saw a muskrat swimming across.

Now when you row through the outlet after a while you come to a road
that branches away from the outlet to the left. That goes through
Brookside. So we drew the boat up there (that’s where the girls told us
to leave it) and started following that road. If it hadn’t been for our
trying to have some fun with Pee-wee when we got to Brookside, I guess
maybe this story would be nothing but nonsense from beginning to end.
But it turned out to be something else beside nonsense—you’ll see.

In Brookside Warde said, “We’ll ’phone to camp here and get it off our
minds.”

I said, “Sure, tell them not to expect us till they see us; maybe not
even then.”

“And I’ll get a soda at the same time,” Pee-wee said. “I’ll treat one
fellow to soda because I’ve only got a quarter and a nickel and four
pennies.”

I said, “After paying for two sodas you’ll look like a sharpy.”

“Do you mean to tell me I don’t treat girls?” he shouted. “Lots of times
I treat girls! Sharpies never treat girls, that’s how you know them.”

I said, “Oh, you’re a reckless little spender. The slot machines will
land you in the poorhouse some day.”

“High-step Harris,” Brent said.

“That’s better than the one-step,” I said.

Hervey said, “We can’t ’phone here anyway, the ’phone is on the
right-hand side of the road. There are only two stores, and one’s a feed
store——”

“What kind of feed?” Pee-wee shouted.

“Oats,” Brent said. “Wild oats, the kind you sow, running wild with
thirty-four cents in your pocket. I suppose you’ll squander it on the
first flapper you meet.”

“I’ll squander it right here in the drug store,” the kid shouted. “And
you needn’t go around telling people I don’t treat girls either.”

“Oh, far be it from it,” I said; “only last week a girl told me you were
a treat.”

We were just heading over to the drug store where the soda fountain and
the ’phone booth were when Hervey said, “Keep to the left.” So just for
the fun of it, to keep Pee-wee from getting a soda we followed along
after Hervey.

Brent said, “Honest, fellows, I think we ought to ’phone to camp.”

“Duty is duty,” Hervey said, awful funny; “keep to the left;

        “When you go on a hike just you mind what I say,
        The right way to go is the opposite way.

        Don’t bother with drug stores but follow this song,
        If you turn to the right, then you’re sure to go wrong.”

Brent just kind of laughed and followed along after Hervey. I had to
laugh, too, to hear him shouting about duty. I guess we all knew that we
ought to ’phone to camp. And I guess we all knew Hervey didn’t want us
to ’phone to camp. I guess he thought they’d only tell us to come home
if we ’phoned. He wasn’t hunting for trouble, that fellow.

But anyway it was so funny to see Pee-wee following along after us with
a terrible scowl on his face, and looking over at the drug store, that
we just couldn’t help hiking right along.

“A scout’s honor,” Hervey said.

Gee whiz, I had to laugh at him.




                              CHAPTER XXII

                       OUR FAVORITE OUTDOOR SPORT


“_Absolutely, positively_, I’m going to get a soda the next place we
come to,” Pee-wee shouted.

“I don’t blame you,” Warde said.

“The next place is Greenvale,” Brent said, “and absolutely, positively,
we’re going to ’phone from there.”

“They’ll only tell us to come in, come in wherever we are,” Hervey said.

“No, they won’t either,” Brent told him. “You’d like to get yourself and
this whole party in wrong with the management. What’s the good of doing
that? All they want to know is where we are. I’ll ’phone; you leave it
to me, it’ll be all right. Then we can take in the carnival at
Greenvale. We can eat at the carnival.”

“Hunting for trouble,” Hervey said.

“You’re the one that’s always hunting for trouble,” Warde told him.

“_I’m_ hunting for eats, I know that,” Pee-wee piped up.

“Is it possible?” I said.

“Suppose there are no eats at the carnival,” the kid said, “what are we
going to do? Then we can’t get anything till morning, because there are
no more towns after that and Chocolate Drop will be asleep when we get
to camp.”

I said, “Didn’t you tell us once a scout never has to starve? That he
can cook moss and make stew out of sassafras and birch bark and maple
gum and cobble-stones and things. All we have to do is to squeeze the
juice out of a couple of hunks of granite and stew up some willow twigs
and sprinkle dirt over them like Daniel Boone used to do, _I don’t
think_, in Wilderness Lore page two hundred fifty-’leven for the
information of maniacs that get lost in the woods of Maine.”

“That shows how much you know about—about—nature—nature’s resources!”
the kid screamed.

All the while we were hiking along the road and all the fellows were
laughing like they always do when Pee-wee and I are engaged in mortal
come-back. He knows how to make nature yield—you know, all that kind of
stuff. He can’t starve when he’s crossing a vacant lot, he can make
table d’hote dinners out of roots like hunters lost in darkest Africa.
If it gets chilly he can make Chile sauce out of the weather. _Some
scout._ He’s so hungry he swallows everything he reads. He can find his
way in the back yard by noticing the angle of an angleworm.

I said, “If they don’t have any pop-corn at the carnival, we should
worry. We can just take some holes and tie them together and make a fish
net and catch some fish in the forest.”

“You think you’re very smart,” he shouted. “You think the Catskills are
a trackless wilderness. Those things are for when you’re in trackless
wildernesses. I suppose you don’t know what unfathomable depths are,” he
hollered at me.

“I wouldn’t know one if I met it in the street,” I said. “But I never
said that a large school of fish is a college.”

“_Did I say that?_” he fairly yelled.

“Sure, you told Mary Temple,” I said. “You told her a blazed trail is
one that’s on fire.”

“_You’re crazy!_” he screamed.

“Don’t you suppose I know that?” I said.

“_You know you’re crazy!_” he screeched triumphantly.

“Absolutely,” I said. “That shows you’re wrong as usual when you say I
don’t know anything.”

“Knowing you’re crazy isn’t knowing anything,” he screamed. “Do you call
that logic?”

“Let up,” Brent started laughing. “Here’s a sign—School Go Slow.”

“A school?” I said. “Believe me, I’ll not only go slow, I’ll stop
altogether. I’ll even go the other way.”

“Keep to the left,” Hervey said.

I guess by this time you’re beginning to see how crazy we are. No wonder
the squirrels eat out of our hands. They think we’re nuts. I guess we
ought to be called the Cuckoo Patrol.




                             CHAPTER XXIII

                          HUNTING FOR TROUBLE


But anyway this story isn’t all nonsense, and you’ll see it isn’t. And
you’ll see that a tangled trail can be something else than just a crazy
left-handed hike, too.

On the road to Greenvale we passed a summer boarding-house named Shady
Villa. There was a big sign across the private roadway to it. Hervey
reached up with a muddy stick (that fellow always carries a stick) and
marked an N after Villa. “Shady Villan,” he said.

“Rub that out,” Brent said. “If you don’t know how to spell villain I
wouldn’t advertise it to the whole world. That’s the trouble with you,
you’re always having bad spells.”

We sat on the railing there and watched some people playing tennis. Gee
whiz, it made me wish for a game. It was just kind of before twilight,
and the sun was a great big red ball.

For a little while I sort of wished we were on our way to camp instead
of on our way away from it. It seemed funny not to be going home at that
time. Suppers are dandy at Temple Camp. I don’t know, I felt a little
funny because it seemed as if we had no right to keep going like that as
long as the day was over. I kind of wished we had ’phoned at Brookside.
I could see Brent was a little worried too. He said, “Come on, let’s
beat it for Greenvale and find a ’phone.”

The only one that didn’t care was Hervey. Because he never cares. He
just thinks about what’s happening and not about what’s going to happen.
No one can change him, that’s what Uncle Jeb says. A lot of times he has
been in trouble on account of that. Even then he was on probation, but
he should worry, because he was having plenty of fun. “One place is as
good as another, if not better,” that’s what he says.

Once he stayed all night at a gypsy camp, and once he rode up to Albany
with a peddler. Outside of us his best friend was Sandwich, because
Sandwich didn’t have any rules. He’d leave any of us to follow Hervey.

So we started off again, and it was about half-past six when we got to
Greenvale.

Hervey said, “Foiled again, the ’phone is on the right, it’s in the
station.”

“I’m going to get a chocolate sundae,” Pee-wee called out.

“You can’t,” Warde told him. “There are no Sunday trains. Stung again.
This is a good place to eat supper, we can just sit down around the
time-table.”

“No stops,” Hervey said, hiking right along. “Carnival next stop.”

“Just a minute,” Brent said; “we’re going to ’phone from that station.”

“And be ordered home,” Hervey said. “Nix on that.”

“We’re going to ’phone,” Brent said, “so that settles it.”

“It settles us, all right,” Hervey said. He didn’t seem mad or
disgruntled, he seemed just happy-go-lucky, the way he always is. Anyway
I couldn’t see that he was sore about it. The kid was sore because he
couldn’t get a soda, but Hervey wasn’t. When I thought about it
afterward—after what happened—I remembered that he wasn’t mad. I guess I
never saw him really mad anyway. He just said, “We’re making the mistake
of our lives, Gaylong. Safety first.”

“That’s just what I say,” Brent laughed.

“If it’s got to be did, I’ll did it,” said Hervey. And he just kept on
marching right around and over toward the station.

Warde said, “You ought to be the one to talk, Brent.”

“What’s the difference?” Brent said. Then he called, “Hey, Hervey, do
you know what number to ask for?”

“I’ll ask her what number she’s got,” he called back. “I’ll pick out a
nice one.”

“Tell them we’re going to the carnival in Greenvale if it’s all right,”
Brent called to him. “Tell them we’ll be home at about eleven.”

“Better make it twelve, hey?” Hervey called. “I’ll make it one, that’s
easier to remember.”

“Eleven, I said,” Brent called. “Ask for Leeds two-seven.”

“All right, old Doctor Gaylong,” Hervey called back.

“That’s just like him,” Warde said. “He doesn’t even know the camp’s
’phone number.” We all sat on the fence across the road from the station
and waited.




                              CHAPTER XXIV

                      THE FLAPPER AND THE FLOPPER


In a minute or so Hervey came sailing out of the station with a funny
kind of a hop, skip and jump that he has. He’s always doing that. He
reached up and gave the telephone sign a good swing as he passed it. He
had queer kind of bright eyes, Hervey had; all the scouts said so. I
don’t know what it was about them. They were gray color and awful
bright. I noticed them as he came over toward us that night. He was
laughing and he said, “All right-o.”

“What’d they say?” Brent asked him.

“All right-o,” Hervey said again.

“Who’d you talk with?” Brent asked him.

“Who’d I talk with?”

“Yere.”

“Oh, I talked with a fellow, a scout,” Hervey said, sort of careless
like.

For a couple of seconds it seemed to me that Brent would go over to the
station himself. But I guess he didn’t want to hurt Hervey’s feelings.
He just said, “What was his name?”

Hervey said in that happy-go-lucky way he has, “His name? Let’s see, his
name was Wilkins. He said he’d tell the keepers.” Hervey always called
the officials of Temple Camp keepers. The more he knew we didn’t like it
the more he did it.

Brent said kind of serious-like, “You talked to a scout by the name of
Wilkins and told him we were going to the carnival and would get back
about eleven?”

“Precisely, exactly.”

“And he said he’d tell the management?”

“Precisely, exactly.”

“Just what did he say?”

“He said ‘All right.’ I bet I can kick that telephone sign down if I
take a good running jump.”

“All right, let’s beat it for the carnival,” Brent said. “Let’s leave
the sign where it is.”

“Just as you say, Doc,” Hervey said.

All the way to the carnival, Brent was kind of quiet. But Hervey, he
should worry. He was doing a new kind of scout pace, it was awful funny.
The thing that stopped Brent from being kind of sober and worried
happened at the carnival. After that everything seemed all right again.
It was all on account of Pee-wee.

The carnival was on the left-hand side of the road but I guess we would
have gone to it anyway because we were hungry. Any port in a storm,
that’s what Brent said. We had some frankfurters and, yum, they went
good. Brent treated to them.

There were lots of city people at that carnival, because Greenvale is a
kind of a young city. It has a high school up on the hill. I suppose
that’s why they call it high. It has movie shows and everything.

In the field where the carnival was, was an old sign that said Earth
For Sale. That shows how important Greenvale is. They thought they
owned the earth. The field was all dolled up and there were a lot of
booths and a merry-go-round and ten cent shows and everything. There
were lots of people there wandering around.

At the edge of the field, near where the road was, were two or three
houses. There were men selling things on the back porches of those
houses. There was a sign on one of them and it said Hot Waffles and
Honey, 15 Cents. There were three or four tables on the porch and a
kind of a counter inside. There was a fat man who I guess owned the
place. He had a big white apron on. There was an Italian boy who was
waiting on people too. All along the railing of the porch and even
inside of the room were more signs. They said De-licious. They Melt in
Your Mouth. Real Southern Waffles. The Kind That Mammy Used to Make.
Here They Are, as Sweet as Sugar, as Soft as Snowflakes.

Pee-wee said, “I’m going to get some of those.”

I guess we would all have bought some because, yum, yum, they smelled
good, but all of a sudden, Pee-wee started ahead of us, pell-mell, for
the building. “I’m going to get two helpings,” he shouted; “I’ve got
thirty-four cents.” Just then, kerplunk, down he went sprawling on the
ground.

“Going down,” Warde said.

“Did you know you fell?” I called to him, just as he was scrambling up
again. “Do you need any first aid or would you prefer orangeade?”

“It’s a rope from that tent,” he shouted. “I tripped over it.”

Before we could reach him a girl went running up to him calling, “_Oh,
did you hurt yourself?_” She began brushing him off and asking him if he
hit his head and kept on brushing him off all the time, straightening
his scarf and everything like that. “Oh, you tore your stocking,” she
said. “Isn’t that a perfect shame!” She was a regular little finale
hopper, that girl. She had on one of those hats, whatever you call it,
and everything. She had on sandals, she had bobbed hair too.

When we reached the scene, Pee-wee was just standing there letting her
brush him off.

Warde said, “That’s the way with him, he falls for everything. He fell
for waffles and then he fell for a rope.”

I said, “Look at the hole in your stocking. Where’s the part where the
hole is? Look around on the ground.”

“Don’t you mind them, they’re crazy,” Pee-wee said.

Brent said to the rest of us, “You shouldn’t laugh at a fellow because
he’s down.”

“Most always he’s up in the air,” I said.

“Don’t you mind them,” the girl said.

“Do you think I’d mind them?” Pee-wee shouted. “They think they’re
having adventures, but they’re crazy.”

“I wouldn’t lower myself as you do,” Warde said.

“He thinks that’s a joke,” the kid said. “They start on a trip——”

“Don’t talk about trips,” I said. “Yours was the best one I ever saw.”

“Did you hurt yourself, kid?” Brent asked him.

I said, “Your stocking looks like a corkscrew.”

“Don’t pay any attention to them,” the girl said.

Pee-wee said, “I wouldn’t bother my head about them; come on and I’ll
treat you to waffles.”

“Are we in on this?” I asked him.

“No, you’re not,” he said. “Come on and I’ll treat you to waffles,” he
said to the girl. “They make me tired.”

“Why do you eat them, then?” I said.

“I think it’s awfully nice of you,” the girl said.

I said, “Oh, that’s nothing, he’s a rising young scout. Didn’t you just
see him rise? If you want to see him at his best go and have some
waffles with him.”

“Will they mind?” she said to Pee-wee.

“What do you care if they mind or not?” Pee-wee said. “Will you come?”

She said, “If—I don’t know—if you think they won’t mind—if you really
want me to.”

“Absolutely, positively,” I said. “Take him away from us a little while.
The pleasure is ours.”




                              CHAPTER XXV

                          RESOURCES AND THINGS


“What—do—you—know—about—that?” Warde said.

“We’re too slow for _him_,” said Hervey. “Let’s climb up on the roof
while we’re waiting.”

“Let’s not,” Brent said.

“Isn’t he the gallant little scout?” Warde said, laughing all the while.

“What do you suppose came over him?” said Brent.

“I guess he wants to show that he’s not a sharpy, that’s all I can make
of it,” I said. “He didn’t lose much time. He’ll have four cents when he
comes out.”

We all laughed, it seemed so funny. Then we all tiptoed up onto the
porch and looked in through a window that was open. I could hardly keep
a straight face to see him in there sitting at a table opposite that
flapper. His feet were up on a cross-piece under the chair and he was
studying the menu card with a terrible scowl on his face. One stocking
was all screwed around from his grand flop.

The girl wasn’t any bigger than he was. Brent said she was a flapper in
the chrysalis stage. He gave one look and turned away with his hand over
his mouth.

Hervey said, “Shall I plug him with a pop-corn ball?”

“You keep the pop-corn in your pocket,” Brent whispered.

“Don’t spoil the show,” I said.

By that time the Italian boy was standing by the table waiting. Pee-wee
looked as if _he_ should worry about the Italian boy. I think there
wasn’t anything on that card but maybe about two things, but Pee-wee
kept studying it. Pretty soon the waiter went away and came back with
two waffles on two plates and a little jar of honey. Then they started
eating.

“What do you think of it?” Warde asked.

“It’s a scene that none but an artist could paint,” Brent said.

“Keep still, don’t laugh,” Warde said to me.

Pretty soon we could hear Pee-wee telling the girl about the scouts. He
told her they have to be shivellers.

“Do you suppose she knows he means chivalry?” Warde asked us.

“Hsh, keep still,” Brent whispered. “Listen.” He caught Hervey by the
arm; I guess he was afraid Hervey was going to throw something.

“They have to be thrifty,” we could hear Pee-wee saying; “so that’s why
they always have money. They don’t need it because they can depend on
nature, but they have it because they’re thrifty. In the forest you need
a lot of lore and things like that. A sharpy, he’d starve in the forest,
but I wouldn’t.”

“Can you picture him starving,” I whispered to Brent.

“Cake-eaters, they never have any money,” Pee-wee said.

“They never treat,” the girl said.

“Sometimes they even make girls treat,” Pee-wee said. “Do you call that
being a shiveller?”

The girl said, “I should say not. I know a boy and when he took me to
have refreshments, he dropped a penny in a slot and got a piece of
chocolate and broke it in half. He called that refreshments.”

“A scout can make a light in the dark even if he hasn’t got any
matches,” Pee-wee said. “Do you know what phosphates are?”

“You mean orange phosphates and lemon phosphates?” the girl asked him.

“N-o-o-o,” Pee-wee said, very lofty like. “It’s something you can make
light with in the pitch dark. If you’re going to be a scout you have to
have a lot of resources. Nature, you have to be able to kind of boss
it.”

The girl looked as if she didn’t see how any one could do that. She
said, “If you’re bossy I don’t like you.”

“I don’t mean I’d boss you,” Pee-wee said. “I’d only boss nature. The
woods—you know—and the stars and things like that.”

“Mr. Silly, you couldn’t boss the stars,” the girl said.

“That shows how much you know about the stars being guides,” he said.
“Maybe on another planet there are scouts. Maybe there are Boy Scouts of
Mars. And maybe to-night they’re taking a hike on Mars and maybe they’re
following this earth, maybe it’s guiding them. See? Right while we’re
sitting here eating waffles maybe some scouts are following this earth.

“Maybe this earth doesn’t look bright to us while we’re sitting here
eating waffles, but just the same that’s the color of it when you get
billions and billions of miles away. Maybe it’s in their handbooks, how
do we know? Right now this minute while I’m sitting on it taking this
mouthful, maybe it’s leading them out of the woods to safety. See?”

“I think you’re just too silly,” she said.

Gee whiz, when I thought of Pee-wee sitting on the earth eating a waffle
and a lot of scouts on Mars following him around I couldn’t keep a
straight face. I whispered to Brent, “If they’re anything like him up
there they’d be following the waffle, not the earth.”

“Shh, keep still,” Brent said.

“Shiveller guided to safety by a waffle,” Warde whispered.

Just then the fat man who ran the place came sailing out through the
door with a great big trayful of waffles. I guess he was going around
the grounds selling them. “Out from under,” he said to us. He was a nice
kind of a man.

Now the way I remember it, it was right away after that Warde said, “The
earth seems to be having an eclipse.”

“What do you know?” I whispered. Because inside the light seemed to be
getting dim all of a sudden. “I hope he has some phosphates in his
pocket,” I said. It was awful funny, the light seemed to be just getting
dimmer and dimmer. “Pity the poor scouts on Mars,” I said.




                              CHAPTER XXVI

                            FLOP NUMBER TWO


Warde said, “The plot seems to be getting thicker. What’s the matter?”

“The lights are slowly and peacefully going out,” I whispered. “I don’t
know where they’re going.”

“They ought not to be allowed out after nine o’clock,” Hervey said.

“I don’t know what kind of parents they can have,” Brent whispered.

“Will they come back, I wonder?” Hervey said.

“Not if they’re anything like you,” I said. “They’ll probably stay out
all night.”

“Oh, the lights are going out,” we could hear the girl say. “Where’s Mr.
Sorronto?” I guess she lived around there; anyway she seemed to know the
man.

“He—he’s gone out too,” Pee-wee said. “You mean the fat man?”

She said, “The meter needs a quarter in it. We have one like that in my
house.”

“I’ll put a quarter in,” Pee-wee said, “and he can give it to me when he
gets back. Where’s the meter?”

“Some little hero?” Brent whispered.

All the while the light was getting dimmer and dimmer, and the kid kept
fumbling around in his pocket. “I got a quarter,” he said.

He could just about see the passageway that led down to the cellar, it
was so dim by that time, but he started for it very proud and
swagger-like. We could hear him tramping down the stairs as if he were
going to kill a couple of dragons like the “shivellers” of old.

“He thinks he’s a knight of the square table or something or other,”
Warde said. “Sir Writing-pad or whatever his name was.”

Pretty soon, zip, up went the lights again and we knew our young hero
had tracked the quarter meter to its lair. He came swaggering back again
and sat down at the table.

“He can even make lights out of quarters,” I said.

In about five minutes the two of them got up and the waiter gave Pee-wee
a check. I guess that was what reminded him that he only had nine cents
in his pocket. All of a sudden he looked funny—kind of blank.

“I’ll give you five cents,” he said to the boy, “and you can get the
quarter from the boss when he comes back. I put a quarter in the meter.”

“You payer de mun,” the boy said, very suspicious.

“I paid it already to the meter,” Pee-wee said.

“You payer de mun now; no go meet ’er,” the boy said.

Pee-wee kept fumbling in his pockets; he looked awful funny. Then he sat
down again and the girl sat down too and they just sat there looking at
each other.

“I have to wait till the man comes back so he can give me the quarter I
dropped in the meter,” Pee-wee said. “Anyway, we’re not in a hurry, are
we? Because anyway, he’ll be back very soon. And anyway I ought to wait
and tell him what I did, hey? That’s only right. If I paid that boy now
and went away the man might wonder who was tampering with his property
and going into his cellar and everything. Scouts, they have to be
careful about those things—I have to tell him what I did—See? You see
how it is?”

“I think it’s poky sitting here,” the girl said. “We can hear the music
here all right,” Pee-wee said. “You can always hear music better at a
distance—you ask anybody.”

The waiter boy walked away, all the while keeping his eye on Pee-wee. He
didn’t seem to understand but anyway he wasn’t going to let those two
get away. I had to laugh to see how he went over and sat behind the
counter and kept his eye on them.

“Gee whiz, one thing,” Pee-wee said; “I’m good and sore from falling
down; my leg is stiff; maybe I ought to rest anyway, hey?”

The girl said, “They’re dancing over in the pavilion. Why can’t we go
over there? It’s so poky sitting here. I want to have a dance. I know
all the boys over there.”

“Do you mean to tell me you’d dance right after eating waffles?” the kid
said. “Gee, that shows you don’t know what’s good for you. A scout isn’t
supposed to hike right away after eating—gee whiz, you ask anybody.”

“I don’t want to ask anybody,” the girl said.

“Mr. Sorronto is selling things over at the pavilion and he won’t come
back till the dancing is all over. He’s got a whole big pile of things
on his tray. He won’t come back till the intermission. I’m just
_longing_ to have a dance,” she said. “I don’t see why you don’t come
back later and tell Mr. Sorronto. He’ll be only too glad to give you
back your twenty-five cents.”

“There might be a lot of reasons,” Pee-wee said. “Maybe the place might
be closed when I come back. Now I see I had—maybe I didn’t have any
right to do that. Do you mean to say I ought to sneak off?”

All the while the waiter kept his eye on them, and the girl was kind of
sulky. She wasn’t mad, but just a little sulky. She wanted to go away, I
could see that. She just pouted and said, “It’s poky sitting here after
we’re all finished.”

Pee-wee said, “You’ll feel more like dancing if you have a good rest.”

“They’re playing a fox-trot,” the girl said.

“I know all about foxes,” Pee-wee said. “Do you want me to tell you
about them?”

_Oh, boy_, I nearly died laughing. Brent had to put his hand over my
mouth and Warde had to put his hand over Hervey’s mouth. There sat the
kid with a terrible, heroic scowl on his face, and his feet kind of
locked in the legs of the chair, and only nine cents in his pocket, and
the girl looking at him and waiting, and the Italian keeping his eye on
him, and the dancing going on over at the pavilion, and Mr. Sorronto
lost in the shuffle. I don’t know where he was, he just forgot to come
back, I guess. Poor kid, but just the same I couldn’t help laughing. It
wouldn’t have bothered a sharpy much. He’d have made her pay the
quarter, _he_ should worry. I know sharpies, all right.

All of a sudden, Hervey Willetts broke loose. He went sailing into the
room with that funny hop, skip and jump he has, and went winding in and
out among the tables, and just as he was passing Pee-wee he grabbed him
by the hand and began shaking it and saying, “H’lo, Scout Harris, I
haven’t seen you in quite a while.” All the while he kept on going and
went winding in and out among the tables and out through the door again.
But I noticed Pee-wee had something in his hand under the table and I
knew it was money.

“All right, if you don’t want to wait, I’ll pay him now,” Pee-wee said.
“Gee whiz, it doesn’t make any difference to me.” Then I could see from
the change he got that Hervey must have passed him a five dollar bill.
That was the day he got his allowance from home; he got it every two
weeks. I know he must have got it that very day or he wouldn’t have had
it all still in his pocket. That was Hervey all over, reckless and
careless.

Gee, I thought about that a lot later, especially after what happened
pretty soon. Because while the four of us were standing outside
laughing, he was the one to break loose and go to Pee-wee’s rescue. And
he did it in a way so the girl would never know. I heard her say to
Pee-wee, “That boy’s just a silly.”

But, jiminies, I can see him now the way he went in and out among those
tables. He can’t do things like other people, he just _can’t_.
Afterwards he told us that was called the Tangled Trail. Gee whiz,
little we thought that pretty soon he’d be on a real tangled trail.
Little we thought when we were all the time saying, “the plot grows
thicker,” how pretty soon it would really grow thicker—for Hervey
anyway....




                             CHAPTER XXVII

                            THE BLACK SHEEP


We all went over and watched the dancing a little while and then we
started home. Pee-wee’s vamp (that’s what we called her) disappeared
forever in the wild and woolly dancing pavilion. Pee-wee never saw her
more—that’s what Brent said.

“I wonder how the sharpy happened to miss the carnival,” Warde said.
“He’ll die of shock when he hears there was dancing there.”

“Come on,” Brent said, “we’ve got to hustle.”

“It’s early yet,” Hervey said.

“Yes, it’ll be early in the morning pretty soon,” Brent said.

Hervey just started singing:

                “Early to bed and early to rise,
                And you’ll never meet any regular guys.”

He should worry.

We followed the Greenvale road to where Fox Trail branches out from it
to the left. But anyway I guess the left-handed hike was off for that
night. We dropped it, and if you pick it up you can have it—we don’t
want it.

It was pretty dark and spooky along Fox Trail; it runs through the
woods. It isn’t a regular road at all. That took us into the trail
around the lake again; you’ll see where if you look at the map. And that
trail took us into Cabin Lane right near the Main Pavilion. And there we
were back at camp again. If it hadn’t been for Sandwich we might have
been hiking around the lake yet and we might have starved just going
round in a circle and that’s why I have so much respect for sandwiches,
because they remind me of the little dog that saved our lives,
especially tongue sandwiches.

There was only one light in camp and that was in Administration Shack. I
thought it was funny because mostly there isn’t any light at all late at
night. The lake looked awful black and the reflection of the light in
Administration Shack showed away off on the water. It seemed like two
lights. We went hiking up the porch of Administration Shack as bold as
could be, with Hervey singing that crazy song:

       “When you go on a hike just you mind what I say,
       The right way to go is the opposite way.

       If you come to a cross-road don’t make a mistake,
       Choose a road, and the _other’s_ the one you should take.

       Don’t bother with sign boards but follow this song,
       If you start on the right road you’re sure to go wrong.

       You can go on your feet, you can go on a bike,
       But the right way is wrong when you start on a hike.”

Around he marched to the door singing a lot of other crazy stuff he knew
that goes like this:

                  For up to twelve o’clock it’s late,
                  Yes, up to twelve o’clock it’s late;
                              It’s very late,
                              It’s very late;
                  Observed his father, surly.

                  So I’ll stay out till after one,
                  Oh, I’ll stay out till after one,
                  Replied his very wise young son;
                      For after one it’s early.

In we went, pell-mell, and there was Mr. Arnoldson (he’s a resident
trustee) sitting at the table reading a magazine. He just laid it down
and looked at us and said very sober, “Well, what’s the big idea?”

I could see something was wrong; I knew he had been sitting up waiting
for us.

“We’ve been to the carnival in Greenvale,” Brent said. “Some crazy day
we’ve had.”

Mr. Arnoldson just said, “Hmph. Your idea, Willetts?”

“Why pick on me,” Hervey said.

“I guess we were all equally crazy,” Brent laughed.

Mr. Arnoldson said, “Well, I suppose you’re all equally reprehensible
then. You scouts know the rules of this camp, don’t you? You know you’re
supposed to be here at supper and afterward unless you have special
permission to be away. Who gave you permission?”

Brent just said, kind of surprised, “Why, I thought it would be all
right if we ’phoned. You said so yourself once.”

“You needn’t tell me what I said,” Mr. Arnoldson shot back at him. “Do
you want me to understand that you ’phoned to camp?”

Brent was sort of a little mad. He said, “I don’t care what you
understand, Mr. Arnoldson, and I think it’s all right to remind you that
you said if scouts were going to stay out they must ’phone. We did
’phone. And we thought that would be all right.”

“At what time did you ’phone?” he asked us.

“At about half-past six,” Brent said.

“From where?”

“From the railroad station at Greenvale.”

That seemed to be a poser to him; he just drummed on the table and
looked at all of us.

“Which one of you ’phoned?” he asked.

“Hervey ’phoned,” Brent said.

“Eh huh, I thought so,” Mr. Arnoldson said, with a kind of a funny
smile. “Who did you talk to, Willetts?”

“A scout named Wilkins,” Hervey said.

“Ask him his name?”

“How do you suppose I found out?” Hervey said. “I didn’t want to ’phone,
I’ll tell you that much. I didn’t care so much.”

“Don’t, Hervey,” Brent said in a low tone.

“I should bother,” Hervey said.

“Bother about whether you tell the truth or not? That what you mean?”
Mr. Arnoldson asked him. Then he said, “Any of you fellows see him
’phone?”

“No, we waited outside,” Brent said.

“Ah, yes,” Mr. Arnoldson said with a kind of a smile. “Well now,” he
said, and he clapped his hand down on the table, “there was no ’phone
message received at this camp from any of you boys this evening.”

“You sure of that?” Brent asked.

“_Absolutely_,” Mr. Arnoldson said. “And there is no scout or anybody
else at this camp by the name of Wilkins. I’m sorry for you four boys,
Harris and Blakeley and Hollister and Gaylong, you were duped. It’s all
right, go to bed and forget it. Willetts, you’re a liar and we don’t
want any liars at this camp. You not only try to fool the management and
disobey rules, but you fool your comrades. You thought we’d call you in
if you ’phoned. And you knew these boys wouldn’t stay out without
’phoning. So you put one over on them; you lied to them. I was going to
give you all a good calling down and then turn in because I’m sleepy. A
good calling down wouldn’t have killed you.”

“Gee whiz, it wouldn’t kill me,” Pee-wee said.

“Now you four turn in and forget it,” Mr. Arnoldson said. “And you,
Willetts, had better go up where your troop bunks, if you know where
that is, and pack up your stuff and get out of here in the morning. And
don’t ever show your face in Temple Camp again. Don’t talk back, and cut
out the bravado; there’s the door, get out of my sight.”

Hervey just stood there gulping. I was glad he wasn’t able to speak
because he would only have started swearing. He doesn’t care much what
he says, sometimes. Anyway before he got a chance I kind of got hold of
him and led him out through the door onto the porch. The others came
out, too, but none of them spoke to him except Pee-wee. He said, “Good
night, Hervey, and anyway I like you.” Hervey didn’t say anything,
didn’t even answer him. Brent and Warde started down Cabin Lane, but
neither of them spoke to him. Brent made out not to see him at all.

Gee, I hated to leave him that way. I waited and said, “Hervey, don’t
you care, maybe a camp like this isn’t the best place for you. I know
most of the things you do you don’t stop to think. You wanted us to keep
going and I’m not holding it against you. I know you’re reckless and you
don’t think. Don’t you care because you’d never get along here anyway. I
know the good side of you.”

“Do you think I’m a liar?” he asked me.

“No, I don’t,” I said. “Just that once——”

“Do you think I lied just that once?” he said. “Why should I lie? I’m
not afraid of Arnoldson and that bunch. I’ve stayed away a dozen times,
haven’t I? I never lied about it.”

I had to smile a little because it seemed as if he was even proud of it.
I said, “No, I know you don’t care about the management. If you did—sort
of fool Brent—it was for our sakes—so we could keep on having fun.”

“Well, I either lied or I didn’t,” Hervey said.

“I know that,” I said, “but I’m thinking of a lot of things the others
don’t think of——”

“_So am I_,” said Hervey.

“Never you mind,” I said.

Just then the light inside went out and I started away, because I guess
I didn’t want Mr. Arnoldson to come out and see me talking with Hervey.
I’m ashamed to admit it, but that’s the way I felt.

As I walked along Cabin Lane to where our troops bunk I noticed that the
reflection out on the water was still there even after the light in
Administration Shack was out. But I was too sleepy and I was feeling too
bad to think about that.

[Illustration: map

I made this map and it isn’t much good and it doesn’t show all the
buildings and things at Temple Camp. But anyway it shows how Cabin
Lane is and how West Trail turns out of it to the left and goes around
the lake and comes into it again near Main Pavilion. So you can see how
it is we kept going round and round the lake all the time till something
happened. Follow the arrows if you don’t want to get anywhere. Only if
you keep following them you’ll never get through the story.

Lucky for you Sandwich was with us, because if it wasn’t for him there
wouldn’t be any story, so that shows how a mutt can be a good author.

                                                          Roy Blakeley]




                             CHAPTER XXVIII

                            THROUGH THE MIST


In my patrol cabin all the fellows were asleep—they’re a sleepy bunch
except when they’re awake. Even Warde seemed to be asleep, but that’s
nothing because I’ve known scouts in my patrol to fall asleep on their
way to our cabin and to undress in their sleep. They go to sleep
beforehand so they won’t have to bother doing it when they get to bed.
That way they save time. Pee-wee is a Raven, and so he didn’t sleep in
our cabin.

I started getting ready to turn in, but I didn’t get very far. I don’t
know, I felt sort of like you do just before exams in school. Kind of, I
don’t know, shaky. Just because Hervey didn’t say anything to Mr.
Arnoldson, that made me think that maybe he would do something crazy. If
he had answered back more I guess I would have felt different.

[Illustration: I SAW SOMEONE SITTING AT THE END OF THE SPRINGBOARD.]

As long as I knew I couldn’t sleep I put my jacket on again because I
hate to be lying down when I can’t sleep, just the same as I don’t like
to be walking around when I’m sleepy. I was wondering what the scouts in
my patrol had been thinking about Warde and me. Because now that I knew
no ’phone message had been received they must have thought it was funny
for us to stay away. I’m patrol leader and I’m supposed to be a shining
example. I guess I’m not so very shiny, but Warde is a good example;
he’s a whole arithmetic.

So I put my jacket on again and went outside. It was pretty dark. Most
always I’m dead to the world at that time of night, and it seemed spooky
to be out when the whole camp was sleeping. _Christopher_, but it was
still. There was a kind of a mist and it seemed to change everything; it
got me all mixed up. I couldn’t tell where the shore of the lake was; it
made the land and the lake sort of the same.

Until then I never knew that there were a lot of things in camp that
make a noise, I mean the boats knocking against the landing and the
weather-vane creaking, and things like that. Because you don’t hear them
in the daytime, or any time when there are other sounds. But believe me,
they gave me the creeps that night. Where I stood I could hardly see the
cabins, the mist was getting so thick. I couldn’t see the tents at all.
I just about knew where the lake began.

All of a sudden I saw something terrible. I saw a thing walking. It was
the same color as the mist, I could only just see it. I couldn’t see
that it had any legs, it just kind of moved, it was the same all the way
down to the ground. I couldn’t stir I was so frightened.

I just stood where I was and, gee, I admit that my heart was thumping. I
heard the chains on the boats clanking and that made me shiver. Lots of
times I’d heard them before, but they sounded spooky that night.

The thing kept going and got to the lake and kept right on walking over
the lake—walked right out over the lake. A little way out it kind of
faded away in the mist. Then I didn’t see it any more. I just stood
there, I couldn’t move....




                              CHAPTER XXIX

                      EYES TO SEE AND EARS TO HEAR


Then all of a sudden I made up my mind I wouldn’t be scared. I walked
right toward where I had seen the thing, because I wanted to prove to
myself that I hadn’t seen anything at all.

Then, in a minute, I had to laugh to myself. I came to the end of the
narrow board-walk that is built out to deep water where the diving board
is. Out at the end of the springboard I could hear a voice, very low. I
walked right out along the boards, making a lot of noise so as to prove
that there wasn’t anything spooky at all.

Away out at the end of the springboard I saw some one sitting with his
feet dangling over. When I got away out to the end I saw it was Hervey.
Sitting right close beside him was Sandwich. Hervey had his bathrobe on
but it was thrown off from his shoulders and I could see he only had his
trousers on. He was kind of shivering.

I said, “You gave me a good scare, Herve. I saw you come out here, but I
couldn’t see the platform under you, the mist is so thick. I thought you
were a ghost or something. What are you doing out here anyway?”

“Oh, just sitting here,” he said. “You’d better go to bed; you know the
rule.”

I said, “How about you?”

“I’m not a part of this outfit any more,” he said. “I’m through—almost
through.”

I said, “You’re just as much of a scout as I am to-night. It’s a wonder
you couldn’t keep one rule before you go away. What are you going to do?
Go in swimming? And besides when you tell me I’d better go to bed that’s
as much as saying I’m not as good as a dog. Do you say that—that I’m not
as good as a dog?”

“Sandwich didn’t call me a liar,” he said.

“Did I call you a liar?” I shot back at him.

“You’re a scout,” he said, “and they’re all the same. They’re as much
the same as a lot of clothes-pins.”

I said, “I know you’re different, Hervey. But I didn’t call you a liar
and none of us fellows did. I admit they think you lied and——”

“You think so too, don’t you?” he said.

“I don’t know what I think,” I said. “But I know I like you, and I’m
going to stay right here as long as you do. A scout has to—no matter
what, a scout has to——”

He just laughed kind of sneering like. He said, “You call yourself a
scout. G-o-o-d night! You’re a peachy bunch, you fellows. You ought to
all be slapped on the wrists—Arnoldson and the whole crowd.”

I said, “Yes, and how aren’t we scouts?”

“You’re all the time shouting about deduction, and observation and all
that bunk,” he said. “I don’t _claim_ to be a scout. But if I did I
wouldn’t wear a pair of blinders. I wouldn’t hear a friend called a
liar, I wouldn’t. Hey, Sandwich?”

“What did we do?” I asked him.

“Well, one thing,” he said, “did you notice the ’phone in Administration
Shack to-night? Did you notice the receiver was hung upside down? Did
you notice how somebody must have been rattled and hung it up in a
hurry? Did you notice the map portfolio lying open? Did you stop to
think that it was while everybody was at supper that I ’phoned? And one
thing more I’ll tell you too; the voice that answered me lisped. Now you
better run to bed. Hey, Sandwich?”

“What do you mean—lisped?” I asked him. “What of it?”

“Don’t make me laugh,” he said. “You don’t even remember that the sharpy
we met on the other side of the lake to-day, lisped. You don’t remember
how he was asking about the trail here? He was the fellow that gave me
the name of Wilkins, because he was all rattled when the ’phone rang.
Stick around a little if you’d like to see him dance. He’s going to do a
dance to-night that he never did before. And it isn’t going to cost him
a cent. Is it Sandwich?”




                              CHAPTER XXX

                            THE THREE OF US


I said, “I don’t understand. What do you mean? What are you going to do?
I didn’t call you a liar, Herve. You admit I didn’t, and I’m blamed glad
I didn’t. You did ’phone then—did you? Just say you did—just say it so I
can say I believe you. Tell me more—I—I believe every blamed word that
you say. I admit I’m a punk scout—now are you satisfied?”

He said, sort of more pleasant, “You’re not so bad, it’s Arnoldson and
that crowd—the keepers.”

I said, “Go on and tell me.”

“Didn’t you notice a light away across the lake when you came out of
Administration Shack?” he asked me.

I said, “I thought it was the reflection of the light.”

“Somebody is out there,” he said. “You can’t see the light now on
account of the mist. But somebody is out there. I can see a little
glimmer now and then.”

“I can’t see anything now,” I said.

“That’s because nobody called you a liar,” he told me. “It means more to
me than it does to you.”

I just gulped, I could hardly speak. I put my hand on his bare arm, it
was all tattooed by some old sailor that he met once, and I said,
“You’re—you’re not going to get away with that, Hervey—not with me. It
means just as much to me—it does—as—as it does to you. It’s just like as
if he called me a liar. That’s the way I feel now. I can’t see any light
out there, but whatever you’re going to do I’m with you. If that crazy
fool came to camp and sneaked into Administration Shack hunting for the
chart he had heard about, he’s a bigger fool than I thought he was. Do
you suppose his name is Wilkins?” I asked Hervey.

“No, he just gave that name,” Hervey said. “If he’d had any sense he’d
have stood the receiver off when the ’phone rang. I suppose he got
rattled. It’s just a crazy fool enterprise all through. He’s out there
now, fishing around, I suppose.”

“I’m glad you admit it’s a fool enterprise,” I said. “Brent was afraid
you’d want to go fishing for it yourself.”

“All I’m interested in is fixing Arnoldson,” Hervey said. “I’ll make him
look like two cents before I go. Come on, Sandwich, if you’re going.”

I said, “What are you going to do, Herve?”

“I’m going to swim over there,” he said. “If it’s that dancing monkey
out there, he’s coming back here to admit he answered the ’phone. I
don’t care anything about his sneaking into Administration Shack or
anything else, that’s his business. But he’s coming back here to say he
answered that ’phone call. Or else he’s going to the bottom of the lake.
That’s me.”

He started sliding off the board, but I held him back. I said, “Hervey,
you’re crazy, you’re not going to swim over there.”

“The boats are locked,” he said.

“Well,” I said, “I’ve got the key for them.” Gee, I never felt more
sorry for Hervey than I did then. Because all the scouts at camp had
keys for the boats. They were only kept locked at night on account of
strange fellows coming there and using them for eel bobbing. It seemed
that Hervey was the only fellow that didn’t have a key.

I said, “Hervey, I can’t swim that far, even if you and Sandwich can.
But I’m going with you, so you’ll have to use a boat; remember you’ve
got a punk scout with you, Herve. You have to make allowance for me.
Will you wait just a minute?”

I groped my way back to my patrol cabin and got a padlock key out of my
duffel bag. Hervey was still waiting, swinging his legs from the board.
Sandwich was right close beside him.

“Come on,” I said, “we’ll row over. If he’s there we’ll find him and if
he’s the one why then he’ll sit out the next dance and have a free ride
back to camp; that ought to appeal to him.”

“You’re breaking the rule to use a boat after nine o’clock,” Hervey
said.

“You’re doing well,” I laughed. “Where did _you_ ever learn the rule? I
always thought that you wouldn’t even know a foot rule unless you were
introduced to it.”

“I don’t want to get you in Dutch,” he said.

I said, “I’m not thinking about rules at all. I’m thinking about you.
Come ahead.”




                              CHAPTER XXXI

                         THE VOICE IN THE NIGHT


Maybe I wouldn’t have thought the same as Hervey did about it, only for
his telling me that the person who answered the ’phone lisped. I hadn’t
noticed anything in Administration Shack at all, I have to admit that.
But if some one answered the ’phone some one must have been there. And
if there were signs that some one had been there, we ought to have
noticed them.

When I thought about it as we rowed out on the lake, gee whiz, I could
see plain enough that that young freak we had met would be just likely
to hike around to camp and walk into Administration Shack if no one was
there. Anyway all the camp was at supper when we were waiting for Hervey
to ’phone, I knew that much.

Probably he didn’t find anything in the map-case to help him, but that
wouldn’t stop him from grappling around in the lake late at night. Mr.
Ellsworth says that people who hunt for treasure are always fools. A lot
of fools had hunted for that tin box before the sharpy, I know that. And
a lot of fellows had talked about it all around the neighborhood. Look
at Harry Donnelle; he was starting to hunt for it.

Anyway, one thing, I knew that the only way Hervey could square himself
was for him to get hold of the fellow who answered his call. You needn’t
think I was going out on a treasure hunt, because I wasn’t. But Hervey
only had that one chance, and I was going to help him.

We rowed around the edge of the lake close enough in so that we could
make out the shore, because that night we couldn’t have seen where we
were going if we hadn’t. Sandwich sat on the little three-cornered seat
in the bow; he looked funny sitting there. The mist was so thick the
handles of the oars were wet and it was all beady with little bits of
drops of water all over inside the boat.

I said, “What are you going to do, Herve? Suppose it’s him, what are you
going to do?”

“I’m going to make him admit what he did, I’m going to make him admit it
to Arnoldson,” Hervey said. “That’s all I care about.”

“And then you’ll stay—at camp?”

“_What? Me?_” he said. “Not so you’d notice it. I’m through with this
crowd—a lot of medal chasers.”

I was rowing and he was sitting sideways up on the stern seat with his
knees drawn up and his hands clasped around them. The little hat without
any brim that he always wore looked funny. It always looked funny but, I
don’t know, that night it looked especially funny. It was all cut full
of holes. Somehow it kind of seemed to me that nobody understood him.
Maybe Sandwich did. Anyway I hoped that things would work out like he
thought they would.

I said, “Herve, if the fellow that answered you lisped, why didn’t you
say so right then? Didn’t it make you suspicious?”

He said, “I never thought about it till we got back, and I saw how
things looked in the office—and Arnoldson called me a liar. Then I
remembered. I remembered that the fellow we met lisped and that the
voice over the ’phone lisped. I’ll nail him all right,” he said. “You
leave it to me. He’s got more resourcefulness, or whatever you call it,
than most of you chaps have, I’ll say that much for him.”

“Thanks for the compliment,” I said. It seemed funny to me that he
wasn’t mad at the fellow for what he did, only at Mr. Arnoldson. He
seemed to think the fellow had done a pretty good stunt. If anybody can
understand Hervey—_g-o-o-d night_!

He just sat there, perched up on the stern seat, very calm and quiet. I
couldn’t make out if he really wanted to square himself or just have an
adventure. I rowed around past the outlet and then he beckoned for me to
stop. I rested on my oars, and we both listened. It was very still. Once
a fish jumped, and that startled me. I could hear an owl way far off.

We drifted out from shore a little till we couldn’t see the shore at
all. It seemed as if we were in the middle of the ocean; we couldn’t see
anything only just a little water around us. It was so strange it had me
nervous. There wasn’t any light anywhere that we could see.

“Listen,” Hervey whispered.

“I don’t hear anything,” I said under my breath.

“Shh,” he said.

“Do you mean that little clanking sound?” I asked him.

For just a minute or so he looked down into the water. I couldn’t see
anything there except that the water was rippling a little. I didn’t
think that was anything worth noticing.

“What’s the matter?” I whispered.

He didn’t say anything, just reached and took one of the oars from me.

“What’s the matter?” I whispered.

Still he didn’t say anything but felt around a little in the water with
the oar.

I whispered, “I don’t think it’s worth while fooling around after the
money if that’s what you’re after. That’s not going to square you at
camp.”

“Got a fish-line?” he whispered.

I just couldn’t help saying, “Yes, I have; scouts carry fish-lines,
that’s one good thing about them.”

There was a hook on my line. He tied an oarlock to the cord for a sinker
and let it down into the water. Pretty soon he began pulling it up again
and all of a sudden, there right outside the boat was a long, thick,
gray thing. Right away I saw it was a fishing seine that he had lifted
up. He reached over and grabbed it and then, somewhere near us I heard a
terrible scream, and then a splash. I couldn’t see anything, only the
thick mist all around....




                             CHAPTER XXXII

                            HERVEY ALL OVER


I was so excited that I let one of the oars go sliding into the water.

“Where are you?” Hervey called. “Can’t you hang onto the boat?”

“It’s sinking,” a voice called.

“It won’t sink,” Hervey shouted. “It’ll swamp. Hang onto the stern of
it. Where are you anyway?”

While he was calling he was feeling for the oars and I had to tell him
that one slid into the water. I wouldn’t tell you what he said, but
anyway he was excited. We could hear screaming and splashing and cries
of “_Help, help!_”

“Hang onto the boat,” Hervey cried. Then he said to me, “Keep calling so
I’ll know where you are. Don’t try to move, you don’t know which way
you’re going. Just let her stand as long as we can’t row. She won’t go
far, only keep calling. All right, I’m with you,” he shouted. Then,
before I could say anything he had jumped into the water and was
swimming off. The mist just swallowed him up and in a few seconds I
couldn’t see him at all, only hear the sound as he swam and that voice
somewhere.

“Here I am,” I kept calling. And sometimes I gave the Silver Fox call
(that’s the call of my patrol) so he would know where I was. But
somewhere another voice kept giving the same calls and I knew it was an
echo and maybe he wouldn’t know what way to go when he started back.
Every time I called the echo called too, from somewhere far off.

Pretty soon I could hear voices and I heard Hervey say, “Let go your
arm, leave it to me.”

“I’m here,” I called. “Here—here—here—here I am. That other voice is an
echo—here I am—right here—right here——”

Pretty soon I could see him coming out of the mist. It seemed just as if
it broke open to let him through. He was holding some one up and I could
see a head sort of hanging back and looking up at the sky.

“All right?” I asked.

“Sure thing,” Hervey said. “Get hold of him, will you?”

“At the stern,” I said. I was glad to show him I knew that much anyway,
never to lift a person over the side of a small boat.

It was some job getting the rescued fellow aboard, and then I saw it was
our friend, the sharpy. His coat with the slanting pockets looked awful
funny all wet and clinging to him. He was all right, that was one good
thing, but his sharpy suit—_good night_! The worst that had happened to
him was a good scare.

“He was doing a new dance when I grabbed him,” Hervey said.

The fellow just lay in the bottom of the boat breathing hard, but I
could see he was all right. He reached up with his left hand and fixed
his funny little necktie, and then I knew he was all right. I guess he
would do that in his sleep.

“He’s going to sit out the next dance,” Hervey said.

“What happened?” I asked him.

Then he told me just how it was. The fellow was dragging the lake with a
seine. He had fastened one end of it on shore and was rowing with the
other end. When Hervey lifted the seine and grabbed it the fellow
happened to be standing in his boat and it pulled him over into the
water. He grabbed the boat along the side and, of course, that swamped
it.

I’ll say one thing, if the old tin box is ever found that will be the
way to find it—dragging with a seine. And that cake-eater would have
stood a pretty good chance of finding it too if he had been free to work
in the daytime. But he was trying to do it all alone in the night, that
was the trouble. Anyway it gave him a good scare and took all the nerve
out of him.

Hervey said to him, “Well, you had a wild night. If you had only told me
what you were going to do when we were talking over the ’phone I’d have
joined in with you. And we’d have found it. It serves you right for
staying away from dances. You have to come back with us to tell one of
the keepers that I’m not a liar and then I’ll hike as far as Catskill
with you if you’re going that way.”

“I’m staying at Brookside,” the sharpy said.

“Well, come over to Temple Camp anyway and see the fun,” Hervey said.
“It’ll do you good.”

I saw that Hervey was just in one of those happy-go-lucky, reckless
moods, and that now after all he didn’t care so much about
anything—unless there was an adventure in it.

So I said, “Mr. Wilkins, or whatever your name is, only I guess that
isn’t your name, when you had your first scare to-night, that was when
you heard the ’phone ring over at camp, you got this fellow in Dutch.
You got him called a liar because he said he ’phoned to camp and they
never heard of any message. We know all about what you did to-night and
nobody’s going to make any trouble for you, because anyway, one thing,
you’ve had trouble enough. There’s a man, he’s trustee——”

“All you have to do is tell him he’s a liar,” Hervey said. “Then I’ll
hike as far as Brookside with you.”

“You don’t have to tell him any such thing,” I said

“You stick to me and you’ll be O. K.,” Hervey told him. “Didn’t I just
save your life?”

The poor sharpy didn’t know what to make of it all. He was grateful to
Hervey, that’s sure. I guess he saw it wasn’t any use denying anything.
I guess he wasn’t scared any more, because Hervey seemed to be making
friends with him, sort of. I had to laugh because after all Hervey’s
fine plan to bring this fellow back like a prisoner, there he was sort
of pals with him. Christopher, but he’s a sketch.

The fellow said, “They’ll make a lot of trouble for me over there.”

“They make it for me too,” Hervey said; “don’t you care.”

“The place was open; I just walked in,” the sharpy said. “There was a
sign that said Visitors Welcome. You fellows invited me to drop over.”

“You sure dropped over,” I began laughing. “The water is unusually wet
to-night. You didn’t take anything over there. They’ll give you a good
calling down, that’s all.”

“I get one of those every day,” Hervey said.

“You mean every minute,” I told him.

Then I said, “All you have to do is come over with us, and anyway you
can’t help it, because I’m sculling the boat around now, and then all
you have to do is admit just what you did so as to prove this friend of
mine didn’t lie. You can do that much, can’t you? He saved your life.
You can put him right with the crowd over there, can’t you? That’s all
you have to do. It’s just a question of whether you’ve got a yellow
streak or not.”

“And we’ll have a lot of fun doing it too,” said Hervey.




                             CHAPTER XXXIII

                           HERVEY’S SERENADE


Honest, I’d rather run the whole Silver Fox Patrol than try to run
Hervey Willetts. But as we sculled around I could see that even that
other fellow was kind of getting to like him.

Hervey sat perched up on the little three-cornered seat in the bow with
his legs dangling out into the water on either side and Sandwich lying
on the bottom near him. He looked, I don’t know,—I just had to laugh
when I looked at him.

I said, “Herve, after all this you’re not going to spoil everything, are
you? We had a good time to-day and we’re going to have a whole lot more.
You’ve got a medal coming to you for what you did to-night. You were
called a liar and now a couple of hours after that you can have the
whole camp eating out of your hand, Mr. Arnoldson and all. This fellow,
you’ve captured him too, and he’ll go the limit to help you. Won’t you?”
I said.

“Nobody can say I have a streak of yellow and get away with it,” the
fellow said.

“For goodness’ sake don’t mix things up now when everything’s coming
your way,” I said to Hervey. “They’ll wrap Temple Camp up for you and
send it home prepaid. Will you let _me_ see Mr. Arnoldson and tell him?”

He said, “Blakeley, I’m through with this outfit for good. I beat it
to-night.”

“While everybody’s shouting for you?” I asked him.

“Precisely, exactly,” he said. “I might have joined a circus this
summer——”

“Goodnight!” I laughed.

“Instead of hanging around here and being insulted,” he said.

“You should worry about being insulted,” I told him. “If you care as
little about being insulted as you care about most things, especially
risking your life, it won’t take you long to forget it. Besides when you
threw an old tomato at the bulletin board so you wouldn’t be able to
read one of the rules on it, wasn’t that insulting the camp? If you’d
only forget insults as easy as you forget rules, gee, I’d be satisfied,”
I told him.

He just said, “Insults I can never forget, Blakeley.” All the while he
was trying to balance the boat hook on his nose.

“You make me tired,” I told him.

When we got to the landing he said, “Come on if you want to see the
grand finale; come on, Wilkins.”

The sharpy kind of hung back. He said, “My name is Tripler.”

“I knew it would be something about tripping,” Hervey said.

“Believe me, you’re the one that’s going to trip,” I told him.

He just said, “Come on, finalehopper, if you want to see the grand
finale. Absolutely nothing can happen to you. Come ahead, Blakeley, if
you want to see me wind up in a blaze of glory.”

I knew he was going to do some crazy fool thing, how could I stop him? I
could see that Tripler, or whatever his name was, was kind of nervous,
but Hervey had him following like a little dog. That’s Hervey. He went
sauntering up through Cabin Lane, swinging his stick and shouting:

                “Early to bed and early to rise,
                And you’ll never meet any regular guys.”

I could hear sounds of scouts moving in the cabins, but a lot he cared.
By the time he got to Official Bungalow there were about a dozen sleepy
looking scouts with us, with their clothes all endways and their hair
all rumpled—they were a wide-awake looking lot, I think not.

“What’s he up to now?” one of them gaped.

_Gee williger_, Hervey looked like a what-do-you-call-it, one of those
knights of old standing in front of a castle.

“Search me,” I said to one of the fellows. “He reminds me of Sir
Building Lot, or whatever they call him, in the tales of King Arthur.”

“_Mr. Arnoldson_!” Hervey shouted. “Oh, you Mr. Arnoldson, come out here
and apologize to me before I start home! Wake up, you old boob!”

“Cut it out,” I said to Hervey; “you mind what I tell you now.”

He just kept shouting, “Come on out if you’re not ashamed to face me!
Come on out till I put it all over you! Oh, you Arnoldson; come on out
and take back what you called me! Come on out if you want me to accept
your apology! Come on out if you want me to apologize your acceptance!
Don’t be afraid of the dark! Come ahead out! Oh, you-u-u-u, Mr.
Arnoldson, come on out; it’s nice and foggy!”

I said, “Will you keep still, Hervey.”

All of a sudden somebody wearing a bath robe came out on the porch. Then
a couple of heads appeared at windows.

“All the fish in Official Bungalow wake up,” Hervey shouted. “Is that
you, Mr. Arnoldson?”

“Careful what you say now,” I whispered to Hervey.




                             CHAPTER XXXIV

                              TOM FIXES IT


Now this is next to the last chapter in this book, but you should worry
because I’m going to write a lot more books.

Mr. Arnoldson said very stern, “Well, sir, what are you doing here at
this hour of the night? What is all this?”

Hervey said, “These fellows came of their own accord except this one and
he’s the one who was in Administration Shack at six o’clock to-night and
answered the ’phone when I called and gave me the name of Wilkins.

“He was there hunting in the case for a chart of the lake, and he’s here
to tell you I’m not a liar. He wanted to hunt for the treasure so you
see there are others as crazy as I am, but I wouldn’t go to the trouble
of telling a lie and I don’t intend to stay here anyway, only I want you
to know that I’m not a liar. He answered the ’phone and said he’d tell
the keepers. He did it because he got rattled, and he’s just as good as
I am——”

“Good night,” I whispered to a fellow near me.

“And he didn’t commit any crime because it says on the shack _visitors
welcome_,” Hervey went on. “So now if you want to ask him any questions
you can do it, and if you care to apologize for calling me a liar you
can do it, only hurry up because I’m through with this place—I’m washing
my hands of it.”

“He knows one scout law—cleanliness,” a fellow whispered.

Mr. Arnoldson was awful nice, I’ll say that. He came down and said,
“Willetts, I’m always ready to apologize when I’m wrong. Who is this
young man?”

“Willetts ought to apologize for waking everybody up,” a scoutmaster
said.

“Not at all,” Mr. Arnoldson said; “I couldn’t sleep with the stigma of
lying upon me.”

“He never sleeps anyway,” somebody said about Hervey.

Cracky, I have no use for sharpies, but I have to admit that this one
was all right. And he could use dandy words too. He told Mr. Arnoldson
just how it was, the whole thing. Hervey just stood there trying to
balance that crazy stick on his nose—he didn’t look very much insulted.

Mr. Arnoldson said, “Well, scouts, I’m glad you arose so you can all
hear my apology.”

“Stop balancing that stick and listen, will you!” I whispered to Hervey.
Honest, he had me nervous.

Mr. Arnoldson said, “Willetts, I never denied you were brave and
venturesome—too venturesome.” That’s just the way he said it. “I never
concealed the fact that you are unruly and disobedient and reckless. You
would rather do a stunt and be spectacular than be a good scout. Your
doubtful reputation caused me to misjudge you. You can’t be any happier
than I am at this public apology.

“I apologize to you, Willetts, and whatever else you are, you are not a
liar. I advise you to go to your quarters and turn in now and get some
sleep. I’m glad you aroused me. In the morning you are going to make a
fresh start, Willetts, and show what kind of a scout you can be.”

It was mighty nice, the way Mr. Arnoldson said it. Gee whiz, he couldn’t
have been nicer. He wasn’t mad at all on account of the things Hervey
had shouted. He just kind of admitted that Hervey was in the right the
way he came and everything. And all the scouts were saying that was some
stunt how he had saved Tripler’s life. _Jiminetty_, Hervey had
everything going his way. That was just when he got me good and mad with
his crazy, reckless ways. Why didn’t he shake hands with Mr. Arnoldson?
Oh, no, he must start off without even saying a word to him. I felt
awful sorry for Mr. Arnoldson. He didn’t even get mad at Hervey calling
him a boob.

Hervey just said very grand like, “I just wanted this whole kindergarten
to know that I’m no liar. Come ahead, Trip, let’s get out of here, I’m
through with this outfit. They’re dead, and they haven’t got sense
enough to lie down. I’m through with this camp for good and all. I was
going to leave last week.”

“I understood you to say you would accept my apology, Willetts,” Mr.
Arnoldson said to him, awful nice and patient, sort of.

Hervey said, “I do, but I’m through with this place. I was told to go
and I’m going—that’s absolutely positive. I’ve had enough. I don’t
belong here, I——”

_Plunk!_ Just as he was starting off who should he bunk right into but
Tom Slade.

“H’lo, Hervey,” said Tom. “What’s the matter now? Breaking up
housekeeping?”

“Slady, I always liked you,” Hervey said; “but this bunch—I’m leaving
to-night, Slady. So long.”

I guess Tom must have been there all the time. He just said, “Too bad,
Hervey, I was just going to ask you to do a little favor for me—a good
turn.”

“Nix on those,” Hervey said. “Come on, Trip.”

“You see,” Tom said in that easy way he has, “there’s a carnival going
on at Greenvale——”

“We were there,” Hervey said; “come ahead, Trip.”

Tom said, “Well, you see, they had a fellow engaged to do a high dive
there on Saturday, and he’s flunked. They sent here and asked if we
happened to have a good diver who could do the stunt—dive from a high
platform or something like that—carrying a flag—I forgot just what. I
told them _nothing doing_——”

“What do you mean, nothing doing?” Hervey blurted out.

“I told them there wasn’t a scout here could do it,” Tom said.

“What do you mean, couldn’t do it?” Hervey shot back at him. “I saw that
platform, it’s a cinch——”

“Yes, for a professional,” Tom said.

“What do you mean a professional?” Hervey came right back at him.
“There’s a pond there and a ladder—we saw the whole business—it’s—Slady
it’s—there’s nothing to it—it’s a kid’s trick.”

“Well, er—as long as you’re starting away to-night,” Tom said. “If you
were staying over Saturday——”

“I’ll stay over Saturday, Slady,” said Hervey. “I’ll do that just to
show you I can. Nobody can call me a— But not a day after Saturday,
Slady. You tell ’em I’ll do that dive and throw in a double
somersault—I’ll show you. You told them there’s nobody here could do
that? _You told them that?_ You make me laugh, Slady!”

“You think you could do it?” Tom asked him, kind of doubtful and
serious.

“Slady, don’t make me laugh,” Hervey said.

“It would be some stunt,” said Tom.

“What do you mean, stunt?” Hervey shot back. “Slady, I’ll show you—you
just leave it to me.”

“You’ll try it then?”

“_Try it!_ Don’t make me smile, Slady. You tell ’em I’ll do it. Here’s
my hand on it.”

“I don’t want your hand,” said Tom; “give it to Mr. Arnoldson. If you
really mean business, if you really think you could do it, if you really
want to give your hand on it, as a pledge——”

“Posilutely,” Hervey said.

“Well, then, give your hand to Mr. Arnoldson,” Tom said; “he’s a
trustee. Go ahead, if you mean business and are not just bluffing, give
your hand to Mr. Arnoldson. Are you game? Talk is cheap. Now see if
you’re game.”

Gee whiz, I had to laugh to see Hervey walk up as bold and friendly as
could be and shake hands with Mr. Arnoldson. Honest, that fellow’s a
scream. Mr. Arnoldson was laughing all over. Before they got through
shaking hands who should go running up but Sandwich, jumping up at Mr.
Arnoldson and at Hervey and barking like mad.

I guess he wanted to give his hand on it too.




                              CHAPTER XXXV

                              TO THE POINT


The next morning after breakfast Hervey said to me—he just came
sauntering up kind of, and he said to me, “Did you ever notice when you
look away up a railroad track how the two rails come together away far
off?”

“Is it a hike?” I asked him.

“No, but didn’t you ever notice?” he said. “You stand between the two
tracks and look _away_ off as far as you can see and the two rails get
nearer and nearer together till they make a point?”

“I see the point,” I told him.

“That’s where I often wanted to take a hike to,” he said. “There must be
a lot of railroad accidents at that place. Wouldn’t you like to hike
there and look around?”

“Oh, absolutely,” I told him; “I’m just as crazy as you are. If we get
to the place we ought to name it some point or other.”

Hervey said, “That’s what I was thinking of. Don’t you suppose all the
places that have names ending with _point_ happened to get their names
that way? West Point and Greenpoint——”

“Sure, and pencil point and pen-point and all those places,” I told him.

“Shall we get Pee-wee?” he said.

“_Good night!_” I shouted. “If we spring that on Pee-wee he’ll drop
dead; he’ll drop so dead that he’ll even be dead and buried.”

“It’s a good kind of a hike,” said Hervey, “because it takes you a long
way.”

“Oh, positively,” I told him; “it takes you even further than that. How
did you ever think of it?”

He said, “Well, after the big fuss last night I went to bed.”

“You expect me to believe that?” I asked him.

“And I thought of it while I was lying in bed,” he said. “If we could
follow the West Shore tracks till we get to the point where they come
together we would probably find a lot of wrecks and skeletons and things
piled up, and maybe a lot of gold. Let’s start along the West Shore
tracks this afternoon and make a solemn vow that we won’t turn back till
we reach the point.”

“That ought to be quite a stroll,” I said. “We’ll stop in Albany for
supper, hey?”

Hervey said, “I had an inspiration.”

“You’d better look out,” I told him; “Pee-wee has all those
copyrighted.”

“This is what I mean,” he said. “Last night while I was lying in bed, I
was wondering what kind of a hike we could take that the management
wouldn’t object to. See? They’re going to be very particular now. So I
thought if we went and told one of the trustees that we’re going to take
a little—you know, just a little stroll.”

“A ramble,” I said.

“Just to the place where the West Shore tracks come together up the
line, why there won’t be any objection because they can see themselves
just where that is. It doesn’t look to me to be more than a mile away.
We’ll promise to turn back as soon as we get there. Hey?”

“Oh, the very minute we get there,” I said. Then he said, “All right,
come on, let’s get Brent and Pee-wee.”

When we found Brent he said very solemn-like that he thought it was a
good idea because when you hike it’s always good to have a destination
even if you don’t use it.

“Sure, they come in handy,” I told him. “And patent, adjustable
destinations are the best kind. Look at Columbus how he started for Asia
and bunked into the West Indies—he should worry. We’re like him only
different.”

So then we waited for Pee-wee. He always takes longer at breakfast than
anybody else, because he has three helpings of oatmeal. By the time he
finishes they have the boards all cleared. Pretty soon he came out.
Brent and Hervey and I were sitting on the lowest step of the pavilion
porch waiting for him. Brent looked at him very solemn over his
spectacles and said:

“Sir Harris, we’re organizing an enterprise to go on a dangerous
exploring expedition. Warde is going stalking so he can’t join us. Would
you care to join your comrades of yesterday in a most interesting quest?
We’re going straight to the point.”

“What point?” Pee-wee wanted to know.

“Ah, that’s the question,” Brent said.

“What d’you mean, the question?” the kid shouted.

“The point in the railroad tracks,” Brent said. “We think it’s about a
mile or two off, but we can’t say. You’ve noticed how the West Shore
tracks come together away up the line—to a point? Do you realize what
that means? The terrible danger to trains at that spot? When a train
reaches a place where the two rails come together, what happens to the
train? It’s terrible even to think of. We’re going to follow the West
Shore tracks north till we come to that spot and then write a report
about it. We’re going to see if we can’t have it remedied. It’s our duty
as boy scouts to save life. Will you join us?”

“Now I know you’re all crazy!” Pee-wee shouted.

“We knew that yesterday,” I told him.

“No wonder Warde won’t go,” he said; “anyway, he’s got a _little_ sense
since yesterday. Gee whiz, any one that doesn’t know there’s no end to a
circle——”

“Now we know,” I said, “but we had to find out. Now we know it’s not
safe to go around much. So we’ve decided to go straight after this,
haven’t we, Brent?”

“Always,” Brent said; “we’ve learned our lesson.”

Pee-wee shouted, “Yes, and I’ve learned mine too, and I’m not going to
go.”

“Can we depend on that?” Brent said. “I heard a cow was run over at that
spot the other day and the neighborhood is filled with chipped beef.
Would that interest you?”

“Are we going to be back for supper?” Pee-wee wanted to know.

“Yes and no,” Brent said.

“Do you call that an answer?” the kid shouted.

“It’s two answers,” Brent said. “What more do you want?”

“If you weren’t such crazy, insane lunatics,” Pee-wee shouted, “you’d
know that the reason the tracks kind of go together is because on
account of perspective.”

I said, “Tell us all about that. Is it the climate?”

“No, it isn’t the climate,” he shouted. “They don’t really do it and
that’s the cause of it. The nearer you get to it the further away it is
because it isn’t anyway, only it seems so—gee whiz.”

Brent said, “There may be some truth in that. We’ll go and see. I never
heard that explanation before. If the thing moves away as we approach,
We’ll just have to head it off and catch it. Maybe it would be better if
we take a roundabout, circuitous course and approach it from beyond.”

“It wouldn’t even be there then,” Pee-wee said, all excited; “you
wouldn’t see it.”

Brent said, “This makes our expedition all the more interesting. Sir
Harris has thrown a new light on the subject. If a thing goes away it
must go somewhere. It can’t go nowhere—that’s logic. Nowhere is not a
place.”

“Why isn’t it?” I said. “It’s got a name, hasn’t it?”

“If it wasn’t it couldn’t have a name,” Hervey said. “If _Somewhere_ is
a place, _Nowhere_ is a place. All I know is the West Shore tracks come
to a point away up the line and they ought to be separated. I’m going to
hike up there this afternoon. Those who are afraid to go can go anyway
for all I care.”

“I’ll go,” Pee-wee said, “because I like to go hiking, but I don’t
subscribe to it kind of.”

“He thinks it’s a magazine,” I said.

“I mean that crazy nonsense,” he shouted.

“Oh, that?” I said. “That isn’t such crazy nonsense; it’s very sensible
nonsense. We’re going now to ask Mr. Apthorpe for permission to go on
our tour of investigation.”

“The first thing you know you’ll get in trouble,” Pee-wee said, “making
fools out of the trustees like that. The first thing you know we’ll all
get sent home on account of Hervey Willetts—getting fresh with trustees
like that.”

“Was Christopher Columbus afraid to ask Queen Isabella if he could go
and discover Columbus, Ohio?” Brent asked him. “We fear not trustees.
Look at the horizon! Somebody discovered it or we wouldn’t know it’s
there. Yet it moves away. That’s because nobody has ever been smart
enough to stalk it. How do you suppose the milkman would ever have
discovered the Milky Way or the iceman discovered Iceland if they’d been
afraid of trustees?”

“You’d better look out,” Pee-wee said, kind of very dark and mysterious.
“The first thing you know we’ll get sent home on account of all this
crazy stuff.”

All the while he was following us toward Administration Shack—that’s
where Mr. Apthorpe is in the mornings because he opens the mail. The kid
wanted to go but he was kind of scared like. Especially he was scared
because Mr. Apthorpe is very cross-looking and dignified. We were all
laughing the way Pee-wee came along after us, kind of hesitating.

But anyway, I guess Mr. Apthorpe knew about us being crazy—the whole
camp knows that by this time. It’s getting so up there that if you just
mention the word hike everybody starts laughing. Anyway nobody ever gets
mad at Brent, not even the trustees. And they only get mad at Hervey to
his face—behind his back they have to laugh at him, scoutmasters and
all. We should worry about being scared of trustees—they’re not as bad
as principals anyway. And mathematic teachers.

So then we—_g-o-o-d night_, there goes the dinner gong, I’ve got to go
downstairs to supper. First I have to wash my hands—so long, I’ll see
you later. Anyway, that’s the end of this story—thank goodness, I bet
that’s what you’ll say. Anyway, I should worry because the next story is
worse than this—you’ll see. It tells all about that crazy hike to West
Shore Point, that’s what we called it.

So if you thought this was the last hike story that’s where you got
left. You can’t lose us, boy!