Marjorie Eaton said, “Can you be serious for five minutes?”

“How long?” Warde asked her.

She said, “Long enough to tell us something about the scouts.”

“You want a serial story about them?” Brent asked her.

“We want a serious story about them,” she said.

“That’s different,” I said. “Do you like pirate stories about them? Because there is buried treasure hidden in Black Lake. That’s no joke, it’s true—absolutely, posilutely. There’s a tin box at the bottom of Black Lake containing about three hundred dollars. The people that started Temple Camp sank a lot of money in the enterprise. We have buried treasure and everything else at Temple Camp.”

“You’re fooling,” Stella Wingate said.

I said, “A scout’s honor is to be toasted; it’s positively true. There’s a diagram in Administration Shack telling where it is—or isn’t, I don’t know which.”

Just then Brent Gaylong kind of touched me on the shoulder and I could see that he winked at Pee-wee and Warde. He kind of put his arm over my shoulder and led me away and said, “For goodness’ sake, don’t start that buried treasure stuff, Roy. You’ll have Hervey diving in the middle of the lake for it. You know how he is.”

“He must know about it,” I said.

“I don’t think he does,” Brent said. “Anyway, you know Tom Slade and Uncle Jeb and the trustees want the fellows to forget about it. Whatever you do don’t get Hervey started on that, whether he knows about it or not. You know he can’t obey instructions, he just can’t, he’s built that way.

“The first thing you know he’ll be drowning himself or getting himself dismissed from camp and we’ll be to blame. It’s like waving a red flag in front of him. Nix on the buried treasure stuff; there’s plenty of fun without that. I’m sorry you mentioned the diagram.”

“All right,” I said, “let it go at that. I was just trying to get the girls interested.”

He said, “Well, let’s get them started on something else.”

“Suits me,” I said; “one subject is as good as another if not better. I’m sorry I put my foot in it.”

“No harm done,” he said, “only let’s not follow it up. The buried treasure is buried; let’s not follow it up.”

“You mean follow it down,” I said. “It’s not troubling my innocent young life, I know that.”

That’s the way it is with Brent, he’s always thinking about what’s best for other fellows. And, gee whiz, he knows Hervey Willetts like a book. He was always a good friend to Hervey. Lots of times Hervey would have gotten into trouble with his recklessness if it hadn’t been for Brent. Tom Slade and the trustees liked Hervey well enough and they admitted he was brave and reckless. But they were kind of sore at him because they couldn’t manage him, and, gee whiz, you couldn’t blame them. Hervey was kind of on the outs at camp except with just us few fellows and that’s why he stuck with us.

Now I’ll tell you about the buried treasure—that’s what we always called it. It was a kind of a joke till little Skinny McCord nearly got drowned trying to fish it up. Then the trustees said we should all forget it. They put a notice on the bulletin board that there should be no more fishing for it.

That was two summers ago. It was before Hervey ever came to Temple Camp. It was only just kind of like ancient history when he got there. I had forgotten all about it because I have no use for ancient history anyway—that and civil government.