here might be
no shadow of doubt about his fulfilling the requirement. Then Hervey
shouted to him to come back, and shook hands with him and was the first
to congratulate him on attaining to the dignity of second-class scout.
Not a word did Hervey say about the amusing fact of little Skinny having
followed the tracks backward; backward or forward, it made no
difference; he had followed them, that was the main thing.

"They're _my_ tracks; all mine," Skinny said.

"You bet," said Hervey; "you can roll them up and put them in your
pocket if you want to."

Skinny gazed at his companion as if he didn't just see how he could do
that.

And so they started down for camp together, verging away from the tracks
of glory, so as to make a short cut.

"I bet you're smart, ain't you?" Skinny asked. "I bet you're the best
scout in this camp. I bet you know everything in the handbook, don't
you?"

"I wouldn't know the handbook if I met it in the street," Hervey said.

Skinny seemed a bit puzzled. "I had a bicycle that a big fellow gave
me," he said, "but it broke. Did you ever have a bicycle?"

"Well, I had one but I lost it before I got it," Hervey said. "So I
don't miss it much," he added.

"You sound as if you were kind of crazy," Skinny said.

"I'm crazy about you," Hervey laughed; and he gave Skinny a shove.

"Anyway, I like you a lot. And they'll surely let me be a second-class
scout now, won't they?"

"I'd like to see them stop you."

CHAPTER XVI

IN DUTCH

That Hervey Willetts was a kind of odd number at camp was evidenced by
his unfamiliarity with the things that were very familiar to most boys
there. He was too restless to hang around the pavilion or sprawl under
the trees or idle about with the others in and near Council Shack. He
never read the bulletin board posted outside, and the inside was a place
of so little interest to him that he had not even seen the beautiful
canoe that was exhibited there, and on which so many longing eyes had
feasted.

Now as he and Skinny entered that sanctum of the powers that were, he
saw it for the first time. It was a beautiful canoe with a gold stripe
around it and gunwales of solid mahogany. It lay on two sawhorses.
Within it, arranged in tempting style, lay two shiny paddles, a caned
back rest, and a handsome leather cushion. Upon it was a little
typewritten sign which read:

This canoe to be given to the first scout this season to win the
Eagle aw