"Did you ever hear of anybody rolling up?" the young hero demanded.

"Sure," said Roy; "didn't you ever roll up and go to sleep? You never rolled _down_, and went to sleep, did you? That shows what you know about geometry."

"That's not geometry," Pee-wee shouted. "I took geometry last year."

"It's about time you put it back," Roy called.

"Look out or you'll take another tumble," Westy added.

"He didn't put the last one back yet," Roy observed.

"There goes your sandwich," another one of the Silver Foxes called with glee, as that precious remnant of Pee-wee's lunch went tumbling and separating down the slanting roof.

"Now you see what you made me do!" he fairly screamed.

"Food is coming down," Roy laughed.

This is a fair sample of the fun and banter which accompanied their work and helped to make it easy and pleasant. Occasionally a harmless missile, perchance a luscious fragment of some honorably discharged tomato, would float gracefully from roof to roof bathing the face of some unsuspecting toiler with the crimson hue of twilight. And once again the weather-stained old shacks would seem alive with merriment and laughter.

As for Blythe he witnessed this merry progress with simple, grateful pleasure. He had expected to see the work done, but he had not expected to see it conjured by scout magic into a kind of play, nor the neighborhood of their joyous labor transformed into a scene of rustic comfort.

By the merest chance the scouts had come and seen and conquered, and presently the scene had that wholesome air of scout life about it. It seemed to poor Blythe as if he had awakened and found himself in fairyland, with a score or more of small brown gnomes climbing and scrambling about his domain, singing, jollying, planning, laughing, working, cooking, eating, kindling big camp-fires with odds and ends of wood, and telling such nonsensical yarns as he had never heard before.

Pee-wee and Roy in particular amused him greatly. "Go on, make fun of him," he would say to Roy. And then he would deliberately take sides with Pee-wee against the whole troop. But he was more p.r.o.ne to listen than to talk.

"Haven't you got any adventures to tell?" Pee-wee asked him around camp-fire one night.

"Sure," said Roy, "look in your pockets and see if you can't find a couple."

"I guess I'm not much of a hand for adventures," Blythe laughed. "I like to hear about them though."

"I'll tell you some," Pee-wee said. "I'll tell you how I found a wallet--"

"And a dime," Westy interrupted.

"Tell how you saved a fish from drowning at Temple Camp," Roy said.

"Sure, that's a fish story," Connie piped up.

So Pee-wee launched forth recounting instances from his career of glory at Temple Camp, the boys prompting and jollying him, all to the simple delight of their new friend. His enjoyment seemed always an incentive to banter and nonsense....

CHAPTER XI

YOUNG MR. BLYTHE

It was soon apparent to the scouts that their coming had saved the enterprise for Blythe. He would not have been able to superintend the job with other helpers and even with the scouts he was rather their companion than their leader.

His attempts at sustained labor were pitiful. Yet he was never idle. But he moved from one unfinished task to another, never realizing apparently that each job he started was left undone. He was quite unequal to the harder part of the work, and the scouts, both kind and observant, could see that, and were content to let him gather and pile the fallen lumber and sometimes to rake up the smaller pieces for their evening fire, which he looked forward to with keen delight. What was the matter with him, they did not know. But this they did know, that he was their friend and that he took a kind of childish delight in their camping. He became excited easily and would sometimes seem almost at the point of crying.

He would throw down his saw or hammer in a kind of despair.

But these traits were not noticeable except in the working hours and not always then. The boys kept up the fiction of his leadership, conferring with him and consulting him about everything. And with open hearts they took him into their scout life and liked him immensely.

The nearest they could get to a solution of his peculiarities was that he was not well and that a long course of unemployment and privation had resulted in his losing his grip. They took him as they found him, like the good scouts that they were, and their enterprise to earn a little money for improving their picturesque meeting-place at home seemed transformed into a collective, splendid good turn in which their scout loyalty shone like a light.

And so the days of strenuous, cheerful toil, and the nights around the companionable blaze, pa.s.sed, and Blythe who seemed always fearful and apprehensive of something appeared to be haunted with a kind of dread that this remote and pleasant rustic life would come to an end.

"We won't be finished next week?" he would say with a kind of simple air of wishing to put off that evil time. "You don't think so, do you?" And Pee-wee would answer, "That's all right, you leave it to me. I'll fix it."

And evidently he did succeed in fixing it, for it rained steadily for three days.

CHAPTER XII

THREE'S A COMPANY

And now, since the sun had reappeared and they had decided to take things a little easier, Pee-wee announced his intentions of going on a pilgrimage to Woodcliff to hunt up the mysterious Helen Shirley Bates, and to ascertain from her the address of her soldier friend whom she had entertained at dinner during the war. For it was on Pee-wee's conscience that the soldier who had lost his wallet had written a letter to his mother somewhere or other and that this had never reached its destination.

"Are you going to wear your Sunday uniform?" Roy asked. For Pee-wee kept a special suit of scout khaki for ceremonial occasions. Upon the sleeve of this were his merit badges.

On this notable pilgrimage, knowing the weakness of young ladies for official regalia, he wore also his canteen (empty), his scout axe--to hew his way into her presence perhaps--a coil of rope dangling from his belt, his scout scarf tied in the celebrated "raven knot" and his hat inside out as a reminder that he had not yet performed his daily good turn. Upon mailing the letter to its proper address, and not until then, would Scout Harris, R.P. F.B.T. B.S.A., put his hat on right side out.

He also took some fudge which he had made as a tribute to his unknown Woodcliff friend. He was prepared to chop her to pieces or to give her candy, whichever the occasion required.

He was indeed a human quartermaster's department and in addition to this equipment he carried also somewhere in the depths of one of his pockets a scout note book wherein the good scout rule of "jotting down things seen by the way" was scrupulously obeyed. There were few wayside trifles that escaped Scout Harris' observant eye. A sample page from this record of his travels will give an idea of his thoroughness:

August 10th. From Temple Camp to Catskill. Pa.s.sed a worm also a piece of a ginger snap. Pa.s.sed a smell like a kitchen. Found a rubber heel in the road. A dead bug was upside down in a puddle.

Met a fence. Saw something that looked like a snake but it was a shoe-lace. Had a soda in Catskill. Had another--raspberry. Saw a flat tire as flat as a pancake and it started me thinking about pancakes.

And so on, and so on.

It was Roy whom Pee-wee chose to accompany him on his important mission.

They had reached a point about fifty yards from the shacks, two of which were well-nigh demolished, when they heard a voice and turning saw Warde Hollister drop from a rafter and come running toward them.

"How far is Woodcliff?" he asked, out of breath, and as if caught by a sudden idea.

"'Bout six or seven miles," Roy said. "We don't know just exactly where we're going except that it's somewhere around Woodcliff Lake."

"I might make my last test," Warde panted. "I just happened to think of it." He looked rather appealingly at Roy who was his patrol leader.

"Come ahead," said Roy, "I'm glad you thought of it."

"Have you got your note book?" Pee-wee vociferously demanded. "You've got to jot down everything you see and write a satisfactory description of it."