where scouts had been erecting a rustic platform outside the pavilion,
had echoed from the neighboring hills. The usually still water of the
lake was rippled by the refreshing breeze which heralded a cooler
evening, and the first rays of dying sunlight painted the ripples
golden, and bathed the cone-like tops of the fir trees across the lake
with a crimson glow.

Out of the chimney of the cooking shack arose the smoke of early
promise, from which the scouts deduced various conclusions as to the
probable character of the meal which would appear in all its luscious
glory a couple of hours later.

A group of scouts, weary of diving, were strung along the springboard
which overhung the shore. A couple of boys played mumbly-peg under the
bulletin board tree. Several were playing ball with an apple, until one
of them began eating it, which put an end to the game. Half a dozen of
the older boys, who had been at work erecting the platform, sauntered
toward the scrub shack, leaving one or two to festoon the bunting over
the stand where the colors shone as if they had been varnished by that
master decorator, the sun, as a last finishing touch to his sweltering
day's work. The emblem patrol sauntered over to the flag pole and
sprawled beneath it to rest and await the moment of sunset. Several
canoes moved aimlessly upon the glinting water, their occupants idling
with the paddles. It was the time of waiting, the empty hour or two
between the day's end and supper-time.

Upon a rock near the lake sat a little fellow, quite alone. He was very
small and very thin, and his belt was drawn ridiculously tight, so that
it gave his khaki jacket the effect of being shirred like the top of a
cloth bag. If he had been standing, he might have suggested, not a
little, the shape of an old-fashioned hour glass. A brass compass
dangled around his neck on a piece of twine as if, being so small, he
was in danger of getting lost any minute. His hair was black and very
streaky, and his eyes had a strange brightness in them.

No one paid any attention to this little gnome of a boy, and he was a
pathetic sight sitting there with his intense gaze, having just a touch
of wildness in it, fixed upon the lake. Doubtless if his scout regalia
had fitted him properly he would not have seemed so pathetic, for it is
not uncommon for a scout to want to be alone in the great companionable
wilderness.

Suddenly, this little fellow's gaze was withdrawn from the