The new recruits to the troop, however, as well as the Angus boys, had been close students of their native wilderness.  Their eyes were sharp and their ears were quick.  They knew every tree and flower and plant that grew about them.  They knew the birds and their calls and songs.  They knew every animal, its cry and its habits of life.  They knew the fish of the sea and lake and stream.  All this was a part of their training for their future profession of hunters and fishermen.

As hunters they had not learned to look upon the wild things of the woods as friends and associates.  To them the animals were only beasts whose valuable pelts could be traded at the Post for necessaries of life or whose flesh was good to eat.  Success in life depended upon man’s ability to outwit and slay birds or animals, and the lads held for them none of the human sympathy that would have added so much to their own enjoyment.

Now they were to have a new view of life.  Doctor Joe was to open to them a wider, happier vista.  It was not in the least to breed in them discontent with their circumscribed life, but rather to open to their consciousness the opportunities that lay within their reach, and to make their life richer and broader and vastly more worth while.

Doctor Joe explained to the five recruits the Tenderfoot Scout requirements, much as he had explained them to David and Andy and Jamie.  Wilderness dwellers who must take in and fix in the mind at a glance every unusual tree or stump or stone if they would find their trail, have a peculiar and remarkable gift of memory born of long practice and the fact that they must perforce depend upon their ability to retain the things they see and hear.  The lads, therefore, required no repetition, and learned their lessons with ease.

Though they had never attended school they could all read, stumbling, to be sure, over the big words, but nevertheless grasping the meaning.  Doctor Joe, during his years in the Bay, had taught not only the Angus boys but many of the other young people to read.  Doctor Joe now marked the pages that they were to study, and before he and the Angus boys turned back across the Bay to The Jug it was agreed that the new troop should hold a week’s camp to study and practise together.  Hollow Cove, some five miles from The Jug, was to be the camping ground, and the first week in October was decided upon as the time.

“We’ll start to camp on Monday marnin’ of that week,” suggested David.  “Come over to The Jug on Sunday.  ’Twill be fine to have us all go to camp together.”

“Aye,” agreed Micah, “’twill be now, and we’ll come, and have a fine time.”

“And we’ll all study about the scout things whilst we’re in camp,” piped up Jamie enthusiastically.

“That we will now,” David assured.

“Lige, you and Peter bring a tent and stove, and all you need for setting up camp,” Doctor Joe directed.  “Can you bring one, too, Seth?”