u meant that I forgot about?
The astronomy badge?"

"No, it isn't," Tom said. "You're too excitable to study the stars. It's
got to be something livelier."

"You've got me down pat, that's sure," Hervey laughed.

Tom smiled, too. "Well, you want the Eagle badge, do you?" he said.

"You seem to think it doesn't amount to much," Hervey complained.

"I think it amounts to a whole lot," Tom said.

"When I get my mind on a thing----" Hervey announced.

"That's the trouble with you," Tom said.

"There you go," Hervey shot back at him; "you've been through the game
and walked away with every honor in the book, and you know the book by
heart and you can track with your eyes shut and you've been to France
and all that and you think I'm just a kid, but it means something to be
an Eagle Scout, I can tell you."

Doubtless Tom Slade, scout, was gratified to receive this valuable
information. "And there's just the one way to get there, is that it?" he
answered quietly, but smiling a little. "I always heard that a scout was
resourceful and had two strings to his bow."

"You just give me a tip and I'll do the rest," said Hervey.

"It must be about tracking, hey?"

"That's it; test three for the stalking badge. _Track an animal a
quarter of a mile._"

"Well, let me think a minute, then," Tom said.

"Up on that mountain, maybe, hey?" Hervey urged.

"Maybe," Tom said.

So they ambled along, the elder quite calm and thoroughly master of
himself, the younger, all impulse, eagerness and enthusiasm. His
generous admiration of Tom, amounting almost to a spirit of worship, was
plainly to be seen. It would have been hard to say how Tom felt or what
he thought. At all events he had not been jostled out of his stolid
calm.

"Did you ever hear any one say that there is more than one way to kill a
cat?" he finally inquired, pausing to notice some bird or squirrel among
the trees.

"I don't want to kill a cat," Hervey said. "I want to find some tracks,
I----"

"You want to be an Eagle Scout," Tom concluded; "and you've got your
mind set on it. That it?"

"That's it; but it's for the sake of my troop, too."

Still again, they strolled on in silence. A little twig cracked under
Tom's foot, the crackle sounding clear in the solemn stillness. Some
feathered creature chirped complainingly at the rude intrusion of its
domain by these strangers. And, almost under their very feet, a tiny
snake wriggled across the trail and was gon