Connover told him the whole story. In his extremity he felt drawn to Mr. Ellsworth though he showed it in a more effeminate way than Tom had shown it, and the readiness with which he made the scoutmaster a refuge rather jarred upon Mr. Ellsworth. Tom, at least, had never gone to pieces like this.

But the scout movement draws its recruits from every direction, and Mr. Ellsworth was the ideal scoutmaster.

“Well, then you think you wouldn’t like to kill Zulus, after all, hey?”

“N-no, sir.”

“Too bad we had to sacrifice an innocent robin to find that out, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.”

The maid at the Bennett bungalow had one good scout quality; she was observant and the fleeting glimpse which she had of Master Connover departing with the rifle was promptly communicated to Mrs. Bennett upon her return.

At the appalling picture of her son trudging across the road into the woods with a fire-arm over his shoulder, the good lady all but collapsed. Her first thought was, of course, that he would shoot himself, which seemed likely enough, and her fear for his safety entirely obliterated her amazement at his shameless disobedience. It was the day of Mrs. Bennett’s Waterloo.

Out she went, and even in her haste and excitement she picked up the Dan Dreadnought volume which sprawled on the veranda, and tossed it into the swinging seat, then hurried across the road and into the woods. The worst thing she had against Captain Dauntless was that he littered her tidy porch.

She followed the same beaten path to the river which Connover had followed and when she reached the bank a few belated stragglers of the picnic party were gathering up their belongings on the opposite side. One of them came over for her in the boat and told her briefly of what had happened.

“Is he alive or dead?” she demanded, hysterically. “Tell me the worst!”

Her inquiry was for Connover, of course, and upon being told that his only trouble was a case of utter fright, she said, “Oh, my poor boy!”

She followed the trail to Camp Ellsworth, hurrying along the beaten path which the scouts had made, until glimpses of their homelike little settlement were visible through the trees.

As she approached it she noticed, even in her anxiety, wide bands of bright red high up on the tree-trunks at intervals. She learned later that these were to indicate the path as well as might be, for a distance on either side of it so that no arrow or missile of any sort should be shot across it. It was one of several precautions to guard against the breaking of this inviolable rule. The path was sacred territory.

Mrs. Bennett was now within the outskirts of the camp and could smell the savory odor of cooking. She passed the tree where the Silver Foxes had spiked a piece of birch-bark with S. F. chalked upon it to indicate that the boys of that patrol were watching the industrious activities of a certain squirrel which patronized that particular tree. Another trunk bore a similar card with R. on it, showing that the Ravens were spying on the private affairs of an oriole which nested above. Little that oriole knew that seven photographs of him were pasted in the Troop Book.

At camp a Red Cross flag had been raised above Mr. Ellsworth’s own tent and except for the quiet comings and going of the scoutmaster himself and Doc Carson, all was quiet here. Mrs. Bennett had expected to find the camp a scene of commotion.

“Good evening, Mrs. Bennett,” said the scoutmaster, in a tone of pleasant surprise. The spider was in his web at last, but he concealed his feeling of elation. “You are just in time to grace the festive board. We’re going to have corn wiggles; did you ever eat a corn wiggle, Mrs. Bennett?”

“Where is my boy?” she demanded.

“Sit down, won’t you? He’s over there learning how to tell a mushroom from a toadstool—­something every boy ought to know.”

“And this other boy?” she added, glancing inside the tent.

“Fine-doing fine. One of our boys hiked it to town for a doctor, and I thought you were he when the sentinel told me someone was coming.”

“You saw me coming?”

“No, we heard you long before we saw you. I wish now that Connover’s sense of hearing were a little more acute. Then he’d have been able to distinguish the locality of a human voice. But there’s no use crying over spilled milk.”

Mrs. Bennett listened breathlessly while he repeated the story of the afternoon’s occurrences. While he was talking a scout approached, removed his hat, saluted Mr. Ellsworth, and handed him a paper. It was a memorandum of the temperature of the river water, an amateur forecast of the weather for the next day, and a “stunt” proposition for O. K. The scoutmaster asked one or two questions and dismissed the messenger. Mrs. Bennett was a little surprised to notice that the questions seemed to bear with practical sense and foresight upon the physical welfare of the boys.

“Do you give your approval to everything?” she asked.

“No—­not always,” he laughed.

“And what then? You can’t watch them all.”

“Oh, dear, no; I just give my veto and forget it.”

“You take the temperature of the river?”

“Yes, and test it for impurities twice a week. Doc attends to that. Come inside, Mrs. Bennett.”

She greeted the reclining O’Connor boy and smoothed his forehead tenderly.

“Have his parents been notified?”

“No, I’m going to town myself this evening,” said Mr. Ellsworth. “I’ll tell them. My idea is to have him remain with us.”

“And who will care for him while you are gone?”

Mr. Ellsworth laughed. “Oh, Doc will be glad to get rid of me,” said he. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“You bathed it with carbolic, did you?”

“No, Doc tells me carbolic is a little out of date. How about that, Doc?”

Doc assented and there was something so eloquently suggestive of efficiency about Doc that, although Mrs. Bennett sniffed audibly, she did not venture to ask what antiseptic had been used. She had supposed that antiseptics of all kinds would be quite unheard of in a camp of boys, and here out in the woods she was being told by a quiet, respectful young fellow in a khaki suit that her favorite antiseptic was “out of date.”

She received the blow with fortitude.

At a little distance from the tent several boys were engaged in the preparation of supper and the setting of the long board under the trees. Others were busy with various forms of house-keeping, or rather camp-keeping, and her domestic instinct prompted her to cast an occasional shrewd look at the systematic and apparently routine work which was going on. What she could not help noticing was the general aspect of orderliness which the camp displayed. Not a paper box nor a tin can was to be seen. She had always associated camping with a sort of rough-and-tumble life and with carelessness in everything pertaining to one’s physical welfare. Cleanliness was, to her notion, quite incompatible with life in tents and cooking out of doors.

Her casual discovery of the practice of testing the river water at stated intervals was in the nature of a knock-out blow. She felt a little bewildered as she watched the comings and goings of the troop members. She did not altogether like the realization that the water which had never been tested for her own son’s bathing was regularly tested for this “Wild West crew.”

“What is that?” she asked.

“That’s our bulletin-board. Let me show you about the camp, Mrs. Bennett. You see, you are not our only visitor; we have a delegation from Barrel Alley, as well.”

A little way from the roaring fire, whence emanated a most savory odor, the gallant representatives of Bridgeboro’s East End were watching the preparations for supper. They had proved faithless to the excursionists and Mr. Ellsworth had invited them to dine at camp, supplementing the invitation with an offer to pay their way home by train, they having come gratuitously on a “freight.” Mr. Ellsworth looked far into the future, but just at that moment Mrs. Bennett was his game.

“Here, you see, is one of the patrol tents and over here is the other. We’re hoping for still a third. Here’s our wireless apparatus. The boys have just discovered that Mr. Berry, the storekeeper over in the village, has an outfit, so they’re in high hopes of having a little chat with him. Here, you see, are the drain ditches, so that the camp is free from dampness and stagnant water. We’ll be lowering the colors presently. Dorry, my boy, bring the Troop Book over so Mrs. Bennett can see it—­and the Troop Album also. Ah, here’s Connie now.”

From among the group about the fire Connover came guiltily forward. Mrs. Bennett put her arm about him although she said nothing and seemed not altogether pleased. The recollection of his disobedience was now beginning to supplant her fear and anxiety. A little group of scouts, all on the alert for service, and anxious to advertise the details and features of their camp life, accompanied the trio about.

“What are those?” Mrs. Bennett asked.

“Spears,” said Roy.

“Do you throw them at animals?”

“No, indeed,” laughed another boy. “We spear papers with them, like this.” He speared a fallen leaf to show her.

“Camp is cleared every morning,” said Mr. Ellsworth, “and here is our first aid outfit—­our special pride,” he added as they re-entered his own little tent. “We have better facilities for the care of an injured person than are to be had in the village.”

“What were those signs I saw on the trees as I came?”

“Just stalking notes; we study and photograph the wild life.”

There was a moment’s pause. “It is certainly nice to encourage a feeling of friendship for the forest life,” she conceded.

“It is not so much a feeling of friendship as of kinship, Mrs. Bennett.”

She turned about and looked sharply at one of the scouts who stood near by. “You are not the Slade boy?” she said.

“Yes-mam.”

“I hardly knew you.”

Mrs. Bennett’s housewifely instincts would not permit her to give any sign of surrender until she had proof of the cooking. But away down in her mother’s heart was an uncomfortable feeling which she could not overcome; a feeling of disappointment and dissatisfaction with her own son. She had too much pride to show it, but Connover felt in some vague way that she was not well pleased. She was a mother of high ideals and she was not undiscerning. Aside from her son’s disobedience, which had been a shock to her, what an inglorious afternoon had been his! It seemed that every one about her had done something worthy that afternoon except her own son. There lay his victim, the O’Connor boy, bearing his suffering in silence. She noticed that the boys seemed somehow to make allowance for Connover, and it touched her pride.

While the last few touches for this special meal were preparing, she and Mr. Ellsworth wandered a little way out of camp. He spoke kindly, almost indulgently, she thought, but as one who knew his business and was qualified to speak. He had stormed Mrs. Bennett’s fortress too many times to mince matters now.

“I don’t know that you’re really to blame, Mrs. Bennett—­except indirectly.”

“I—­to blame?”

“I blame Dan Dreadnought.”

“I never approved of Captain Dauntless’ books,” she said. “It was a compromise.”

“Look up there, Mrs. Bennett—­see that nest? Would you believe it, the boys got a photograph of the young birds in that nest and the old bird never knew it.”

They walked along, he swinging a stick whick he had broken from a tree. “There is no such man as Captain Dauntless, you know. Captains in the army have other work to do than to write stories for boys. Captain Dauntless is a myth.”

“It is so hard to know what boys should read,” she sighed.

“It is not as hard as it used to be. Remind me to give you a paper before you go. You see, if Connie had been a scout,—­well now, let’s begin at the beginning. If he had been a scout he wouldn’t have read those books in the first place; they’re really not books at all, they’re infernal machines. Then if he had been a scout, of course, he wouldn’t have disobeyed you; he wouldn’t have sneaked off——­”

Mrs. Bennett set her lips rather tight at that word, but she did not contest the point.

“If he had been a scout he wouldn’t have killed a robin—­but if he had killed a robin, it would have been by skill and not by a silly, dangerous random shot—­and he wouldn’t have been afraid of the presence of death or the sight of blood. If he had been a scout he could have determined unerringly the locality of sounds and human voices, and Charlie O’Connor wouldn’t——­”

Mrs. Bennett winced.

“If he had been a scout he would have known how to swim; there isn’t a member of my troop that can’t swim. And if he had been a scout he wouldn’t have been afraid to go home. Connie has the best home in the world, Mrs. Bennett——­”

“I have done everything for Connover——­”

“But you see, he was afraid to go to it—­and so he came here with us.”

The cheerful call of the bugle told that supper was ready. Through the trees they could see the scouts assembling until each stood at his place at the long board under trees whose foliage had begun to dim in the fading light.

“It’s a pretty sight,” she said, pausing and raising her lorgnette to her eyes. “What are they all standing for?”

“Till you have taken your seat.”

Smilingly she started toward them with all the cultured affability of a true guest. She knew how to do this thing, and she was quite at home now. Mr. Ellsworth knew that her manner covered a sense of humiliation, but she carried it off well and so together they came out of the woods into the clearing.

“I was saying that he came here and—­and we want him to stay here. Will you let him join us, Mrs. Bennett?”

“Would he have two blankets over him at night?” she asked after a moment’s dismayed pause.

The question was not a surrender; it was a flag of truce, meaning that she would discuss terms.

The surrender came after supper.

Chapter XIX