d suspiciously like the voice of Pee-wee Harris. "Everybody's an
animal--even I'm an animal--even you're an animal--sure a bird's an
animal! That's not a teckinality! Sure a bird's an animal!"

"Well, then, that settles it," laughed Mr. Temple amid a very tempest
of laughter, "if that is Mr. Harris of my own home town speaking, we
have the opinion of the highest legal expert on scouting----"

"And eating!" came a voice.

Thus, amid an uproarious medley of laughter and applause, and of
cheering which echoed from the darkening hills across the quiet lake,
Hervey Willetts stood erect while Mr. John Temple, founder of the camp
and famous in scouting circles the world over, placed upon his jacket
the badge which made him an Eagle Scout and incidentally brought him the
canoe on which so many eyes had gazed longingly.

And then one after another, pell-mell, scouts clambered onto the
platform and surrounded him, while the scouts of his own troop edged
them aside and elbowed their way to where he stood and mobbed him. And
amid all this a small form, with clothing disarranged from close
contact, but intent upon his purpose, squirmed and wriggled in and threw
his little skinny arms around the hero's waist.

"Will you--will you take me out in it?" he asked. "Just once--will
you?"

"The canoe?" Hervey said. "You'll have to ask my troop, Alf, old top; it
belongs to them. What would a happy-go-lucky nut like I am be doing,
paddling around in a swell canoe like that?"

"Let me--let me see the badge," little Skinny insisted.

But already Hervey had handed the badge over to his troop. Probably he
thought that it would interfere with his climbing trees or perhaps fall
off when he was hanging upside down from some treacherous limb or
scrambling head foremost down some dizzy cliff. No doubt it would be
more or less in the way during his stuntful career....

CHAPTER XXIV

THE RED STREAK

There was one resident at Temple Camp who did not attend that memorable
meeting by reason of being sound asleep at the time. This was Orestes,
the oriole, who had had such a narrow squeak of it up at the foot of the
mountain. Orestes always went to bed early and got up early, being in
all ways a model scout.

It is true that just at the moment when the cheering became tumultuous,
Orestes shook out her feathers and peered out of the little door of her
hanging nest but, seeing no near-by peril, settled down again to sweet
slumber, never