“You going to be on hand at five?” Tom queried in his usual off-hand manner.

“What’s the use?” Hervey asked.  “There’s nothing in it for me.”

Tom leaned against the railing of the porch, with his stolid, half interested air.

“Nothing in it for me,” Hervey repeated, twirling his hat on the stick in fine bravado.

“So you’ve decided to be a quitter,” Tom said, quietly.

Hervey winced a bit at this.

“You know you said you weren’t so stuck on eagles,” Hervey reminded him, rather irrelevantly.

“Well, I’m not so stuck on quitters either,” Tom said.

“What’s the good of my going?  I’m not getting anything out of it.”

“Neither am I,” said Tom.

“You got stung when you made a prophecy about me, didn’t you?” Hervey said with cutting unkindness.  “You and I both fell down, hey?  We’re punk scouts—­we should bother our heads.”

Again he began twirling his hat on the stick.  “I couldn’t sit with my troop, anyway,” he added; “I’m in Dutch.”

“Well, sit with mine, then; Roy Blakeley and that bunch are all from my home town; they’re nice fellows.  You know Pee-wee Harris—­the little fellow that fell off the springboard?”

“I ought to like him; we both fell down.”

“Well, you be on hand at five o’clock and don’t make matters worse, like a young fool.  If you’ve lost the eagle, you’ve lost it.  That’s no reason you should slight Mr. Temple, who founded this camp.  We expect every scout in camp to be on hand.  You’re not the only one in camp who isn’t getting the Eagle award.”

“You call me a fool?”

“Yes, you’re twenty different kinds of a fool.”

“Almost an Eagle fool, hey?”

He went on up the hill toward his patrol cabin, tossing his hat in the air and trying to catch it on his head.  As luck would have it, just before he entered the little rustic home of sorrow, the hat landed plunk on his head, a little to the back and very much to the side, and he let it remain in that rakish posture when he entered.

The effect was not pleasing to his comrades and scoutmaster.

CHAPTER XX

UNCLE JEB

At five o’clock every seat around the open air platform was occupied.  Every bench out of Scout Chapel, the long boards on which the hungry multitude lined up at supper-time, every chair from Council Shack and Main Pavilion, and many a trunk and cedar chest from tents and cabins and a dozen other sorts of makeshift seating accommodations were laid under contribution for the gala occasion.  And even these were not enough, for the whole neighboring village turned out in a body, and gaping summer boarders strolled into the camp in little groups, thankful for something to do and see.

There was plenty doing.  Those who could not get seats sprawled under the trees in back of the seats and a few scouts perched up among the branches.