I don’t know, it seemed kind of natural, sort of, for us to see Hervey Willetts like that, away from all the other scouts at camp. I said to Westy I was kind of glad we saw him first just the way we did and that he wasn’t in the crowd at the landing.

Westy said the same thing. I don’t know why he said that, but it seemed as if Hervey was different from everybody else; I guess that’s what we were thinking. Most always he was alone.

He had lots and lots of friends, but they weren’t scouts at camp. He knew all the farmers around the country, and sometimes he stayed at their homes all night. He got acquainted with peddlers and tramps and stayed away and, gee whiz, you couldn’t blame the trustees for getting mad. He was funny in some ways.

He could do most anything, but yet he never bothered his head about merit badges. Mr. Ellsworth (he’s our scoutmaster) said Hervey was an adventurer, not a scout. He said he could do stunts, but he could never do tests. Mr. Ellsworth said scouting is a kind of a harness, and Hervey couldn’t wear a harness. Anyway, just the same he liked Hervey because he just couldn’t help it.

I had to laugh to myself when I thought how he was sitting on that shutter just waiting for it to be let down so he could have a swim after hours. He could say he fell in and had to swim to the landing. If anybody would be to blame it would be Chocolate Drop, who always let the shutter down from the inside.

I was wondering how Hervey got out there on that shutter. He must have climbed over the roof of the cooking shack and let himself down on the side over the lake. I had to laugh when I thought how funny it would look when the shutter was let down to see him go sprawling accidentally on purpose into the lake, which would be just what he wanted. I knew he intended to beat the rule, but gee, I couldn’t help seeing the funny side of it.

But anyway, soon we forgot all about it on account of the scouts all being at the landing to meet us. I guess every scout I ever saw at Temple Camp was there. Bert Winton was there and Brent Gaylong. He was just as lanky as ever, and his spectacles were half-way down his nose like a schoolmaster, and he had that same slow, drawly, funny way about him.

There’s always a big fuss when our troop gets to camp, because Mr. Temple, who started the camp, lives in our town. Pee-wee says Mr. Temple donated the camp, and he thinks that means he supplied it with doughnuts. The reason why Mr. Temple doughnutted the camp is because he was interested in Tom Slade when Tom was a hoodlum in our town.

Tom Slade used to be in our troop, but now he stays at Temple Camp all the time, and he’s assistant manager under Uncle Jeb Rushmore, and Uncle Jeb used to be a trapper, and he fought with General Custer, and Pee-wee thinks that General Custer was named after cup custards, and General Custer fought the Indians, and if it wasn’t for the Indians we wouldn’t have any Indian pudding, and that’s my favorite dessert.

So that brings me to the part where we were all eating dessert that first night we got to Temple Camp. Everybody was through supper and we had the eats pavilion all to ourselves on account of it being too dark to eat at the big mess-board out under the trees.

I guess you know all about the troop I’m in. It’s the first Bridgeboro troop of Bridgeboro, New Jersey. If you want to know where New Jersey is, it’s on page twenty-seven of the geography.

These are the three patrols in our troop, and about twice a minute Pee-wee starts another one. But don’t pay any attention to the patrols he starts, because they don’t amount to anything. The only warranted, genuine patrols in our troop are the raving Ravens (he’s one of them, I mean he’s about six of them) and the Elks and the Silver Foxes. I’m patrol leader of the Silver Foxes.

The best thing about the Ravens is that they’re not Elks. And the best thing about the Elks is that they’re not Ravens. And the worst thing about the Silver Foxes is that they’re in the same troop with the Elks and the Ravens—they’re more to be pitied than blamed. Temple Camp is at Black Lake and Black Lake is in the Catskills, and the Catskills are somewhere or other, I should worry, you reach them in the second grade, that’s all I know.

So now you know about Hervey Willetts and my troop and Temple Camp, and if you want to know all the rest about them you’ll find it in a lot of stories I wrote that have my picture on the cover of them. All those stories are crazier than each other. But if you want to read the craziest one of all you want to read this one. Even the laughing brook at Temple Camp died laughing.

It’s such a lot of nonsense that it’s dedicated to a crazy quilt. Every bit of it is taken from life, and my sister says life ought to be thankful to get rid of it. Many thanks, I told her. Anyway, I don’t care what you say, this story is all about real happenings—real adventures and real estate. Oh, boy, wait till you see the real estate that’s in it.