“How are you going to get him to practice?” Andy demanded.

“Ask him.”

“Mackerel!  Ask him to do extra work?  Can’t you imagine what he’ll tell you?”

Don could imagine it without much trouble.  But he remembered how his last appeal, when everything seemed lost, had stopped the Danger Mountain hike.  It cost nothing to try.  He had no love for the job of intimating to Tim that his work was not satisfactory.  And yet was it fair for him to keep silent?  Was it fair to those scouts who had labored with a will?

He went out to the porch and lifted his voice.  “Tim!  O Tim!”

An answering cry came faintly.

“Now for the fireworks,” said Andy.

Tim came through the gate and advanced as far as the porch steps.

“How about you and Andy and Bobbie practicing a couple of times before Friday?” Don asked.

There was a long interval of silence.

“All right,” said Tim at last.  He swung around and walked out the gate.

“Mackerel!” said Andy.  “I thought he’d go up in the air.”

Wednesday morning Tim practiced at troop headquarters.  Thursday afternoon, as soon as the baseball drill was over, he practiced again.  Friday morning he was even ready for more; but that morning Bobbie had to weed the vegetable garden in back of his house and could not come around.  Tim went home vaguely disappointed.

That afternoon, at the baseball field, he played a butter-fingered game.  He could not hold the ball, and his throws to bases were atrocious.

“Hi, there!” called Ted.  “Go take a walk around the block.”

Tim was frightened.  “Don’t you want me to play tomorrow?”

“Sure I do.  Tomorrow you’ll be all right.  This is your bad day.  Go off by yourself and get the air.”

Tim went off to the maple tree and sat down.  And by and by he found himself wondering, not what kind of baseball he would play on the morrow, but whether he would be good or bad in first aid that night.

He came to troop headquarters after supper with a queer, nervous feeling in the pit of his stomach.  Outside, the Eagles were making one last hurried practice of the business of making a coat stretcher.  Tim wished he could do a little practicing, too; but when he went inside and joined his patrol, he shrank from asking Andy and Bobbie to work with him.

The hands of the clock crept around to the hour of eight.  The Eagles came inside.  Mr. Wall called the patrol leaders.

“We don’t want any lagging or fooling,” he announced.  “Have your scouts move lively.”

“Yes, sir.”  The leaders went back to their patrols and repeated what the Scoutmaster had said.

Mr. Wall’s whistle shrilled.  The bugle sounded “To the Colors.”  Fifteen minutes later the inspection was over.  Each patrol had a perfect score.  The result was marked on the board: 

PATROL POINTS