This canoe to be given to the first scout this season to win the
    Eagle award.

“That’s rubbing it in,” said Hervey to himself.  “That’s two things, a bicycle and a canoe I’ve lost before I got them.”

He sat down at the table in the public part of the office while Skinny, all excitement, stood by and watched him eagerly.  He pulled a sheet of the camp stationery toward him and wrote upon it in his free, sprawling, reckless hand.

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: 

This will prove that Alfred McCord of Bridgeboro troop tracked some kind of an animal for more than a half a mile, because I saw him doing it and I saw the tracks and I came back with him and I know all about it and it was one good stunt I’ll tell the world.  So if that’s all he’s got to do to be a second-class scout, he’s got the badge already, and if anybody wants to know anything about it they can ask me.

         &nb
sp;                                            HERVEY WILLETTS,
          
                                             Troop Cabin 13.

After scrawling this conclusive affidavit and placing it under a weight on the desk of Mr. Wade, resident trustee, Hervey sauntered over to the cabins occupied by the two patrols of his troop, the Leopards and the Panthers.  They were just getting ready to go to supper.

“Anything doing, Hervey?” his scoutmaster, Mr. Warren, asked him.

“Nothing doing,” Hervey answered laconically.

“Maybe he doesn’t know what you’re talking about,” one of his patrol, the Panthers, suggested.  This was intended as a sarcastic reference to Hervey’s way of losing interest in his undertakings before they were completed.

“Have you got a trail—­any tracks?” another asked.

Hervey began rummaging through his pockets and said, “I haven’t got one with me.”

“You didn’t happen to see that canoe in Council Shack, did you?” Mr. Warren asked him.

“Yes, it’s very nice,” Hervey said.

Mr. Warren paused a moment, irresolute.

“Hervey,” he finally said, “the boys think it’s too bad that you should fall down just at the last minute.  After all you’ve accomplished, it seems like—­what shall I say—­like Columbus turning back just before land was sighted.”

“He didn’t turn back,” Hervey said; “now there’s one thing I didn’t forget—­my little old history book.  When Columbus started to cross the Delaware——­”

“Listen, Hervey,” Mr. Warren interrupted him; “suppose you and I walk together, I want to talk with you.”

So they strolled together in the direction of the mess boards.

“Now, Hervey, my boy,” said Mr. Warren, “I don’t want you to be angry at what I say, but the boys are disgruntled and I think you can’t blame them.  They set their hearts on having the Eagle award in the troop and they elected you to bring it to them.  I was the first to suggest you.  I think we were all agreed that you had the, what shall I say, the pep and initiative to go out and get it.  You won twenty badges with flying colors, I don’t know how you did it, and now you’re falling down all on account of one single requirement.