and
before long he was retorting with sundry dry comments that sent them
off into shouts of laughter.

Under his supervision the cabin grew apace. When the logs were all cut
and carried in, Mr. Curtis devoted himself mainly to the stone chimney
which, though necessarily slower and more difficult work, progressed
very well. The opening was made to take four-foot logs, and the stone
facing filled up more than half that end of the cabin. The boys could
not wait for its completion to give it a baptism of fire. When the
sides were up three feet or more, they kindled a blaze and cooked lunch
there--the first meal to be prepared in the cabin.

Another celebration marked the setting of the ridge-pole; and when the
roof was laid, it seemed as if the end was actually in sight. In the
meantime, the important detail of earning money to pay for necessary
materials had not been lost sight of. It had been decided that the scouts
should go about this either singly or in groups, as they preferred. A
number of suggestions were made by Mr. Curtis, but it was impressed
upon the troop that there must be no appeal for either work or money
in any way that would in the least savor of begging. Whatever they did
must be real work, the sort that people wanted done whether or not a
scout cabin was in process of erection; and they must always give value
received.

The methods resorted to seemed endless. Three boys who were adept with
saw, hammer, and plane undertook the building of bird-houses, and their
products were so well made and attractive that they had a hard time
filling orders. Others raked up lawns, tended furnaces, cleaned cellars,
sawed wood, and did a score of other varied chores. One entire patrol
took up the subscription proposition of a big publishing-house and
devoted themselves to it with such ardor that they cleared up nearly
as much as all the rest together.

It can safely be said that few members of the troop had many spare
minutes in the month that followed the starting of the cabin. There was
no time for sports or games or reading stories. The public library was
deserted. Of course there were a few who tired of the constant pressure
and managed to escape a Saturday's labor by some flimsy pretext, but, on
the whole, they stuck to it with remarkable perseverance. And when the
last stone was in place on the chimney-top, the last chink filled, the
last nail driven, there wasn't a boy in all that twenty-five who didn't
feel