“What gate?”

“I mean here on this log.”

“Do you know Tom Slade?”

“You bet.”

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

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

“That isn’t my name.”

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

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

“They’re my tracks; all mine,” Skinny said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’d like to see them stop you.”

CHAPTER XVI

IN DUTCH

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

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