cap to keep from getting cold!"

All of them were laughing by now. As for Smithy, he looked as if he
could not understand what all the fuss was about.

"Why, I always sleep this way at home," he stammered, as he glanced
around at his hilarious comrades.

"Perhaps you do," jeered Davy Jones, who could take hard knocks without
any whimper; "but mother's darling boy ain't home right now. A true
scout must learn to sleep in his blanket alone. An old boot will do for
a pillow; and he won't ever want to be rocked to sleep either. The
breeze will be his lullaby, and the blue canopy of heaven his coverlet."

"Hurrah for you, Davy; that's as good a definition of what a Boy Scout
should accustom himself to, as I ever heard. I didn't know you had it in
you to talk like that," said Thad, warmly.

"Oh! I got that out of a book," declared Davy, frankly.

"And Thad, do I have to give up these nice clean sheets; and crawl in
between the folds of a nasty, rough, tickly blanket?" asked Smithy,
pleadingly.

"It will be just as well for you to begin right, Number Five," said the
scout-master, pleasantly but firmly. "Sooner or later, if you stick by
the Silver Fox Patrol, you've got to learn how to rough it. And if you
think enough of your fellow scouts to make this sacrifice, all the
better."

Without a word then, Smithy tossed the offending sheets across to Thad;
and followed with his usual night apparel.

"I'll take those pajamas, Davy; and thank you kindly for offering to
loan them to me;" he said, bravely; but when the faded and somewhat torn
night suit was immediately handed over to him, the particular boy was
seen to shudder, as though they gave him a cold chill.

Still, he proved to be true grit, and was soon donning them, so as to
keep up with the balance of the boys. Thad winked toward Allan, as much
as to say that he felt very much encouraged at the progress being made
in the education of Edmund Maurice Travers Smith, the spoiled darling of
a weak mamma.

"Mark my word for it," he said in a low tone to his second in command;
"with all his pink and white complexion, and girlish ways, there's the
making of a good scout in Smithy. Given a little time for him to get
over the cruel shock these rough ways bring to his orderly system, and
you'll see a different sort of fellow spring up. The seed's there all
right. And mamma's baby boy will turn into as sturdy and hardy a scout
as there is in the troop."

Allan smiled, and