Tom Slade had not the moral courage to crown his splendid triumph by going straightway and giving the pin to Mary Temple. He could not overcome his fear of John Temple and the awe of the palatial residence. You see, he had not the legacy of refined breeding to draw upon. The Scout movement had taken a big contract in the making of Tom Slade, but Mr. Ellsworth (good sport that he was) was never daunted. Tom did not know how to go alone up to the luxurious veranda at Five Oaks, ring the bell, face that stoical Japanese, ask to see the pretty, beautifullydressed girl, and restore her pin to her. He could have done it without revealing the identity of the fugitive, but he did not know how to do it; he would not ask Roy to come to his assistance, and he missed the best fruits of his triumph.

So he went back to camp (scout pace, for it was getting late), his empty membership booklet flapping against his chest as he ran.

It was fortunate for his disturbed and rather sullen state of mind that an unusual diversion was on the boards at camp. The Ravens’ tent was quite deserted; Mr. Ellsworth was in his own tent, busily writing, and he called out cordially, “Hello, Tommy,” as Tom passed on to the Silver Foxes’ tent.

Within Roy was standing on a box holding forth to the entire patrol, and he was in that mood which never failed to fascinate Tom.

“Sit down; you get two slaps on the wrist for being late,” said he. This was the only reference he or any of them made to Tom’s disappearance at Five Oaks. A scout is tactful. “I don’t see any seat,” Tom said.

“Get up and give Tom a seat,” ordered Roy.

“I wouldn’t get up and give President Wilson a seat,” announced Eddie Ingram.

“Not me,” laughed Dorry Benton, “I stalked for six miles to-day.”

“Get up and give Mr. Thomas Slade a seat, somebody,” shouted Roy.

“Keep still, you’ll wake the baby,” said Westy.

“You wouldn’t catch me getting up to give George Washington a seat,” said Bert Collins, “not after that hike.”

“I’ll make them get up,” said Roy, fumbling in his pocket.

“Yes, you will—­not,” said Westy.

“Look at Eddie, he’s half asleep,” said Dorry.

“Wake up, Ed,” shouted Roy. “It’s time to take your sleeping powder.

“I wouldn’t get up if you set a firecracker off under me, that’s how tired I am,” mumbled Eddie.

“I’ll make them get up,” Roy whispered, winking at Tom.

He pulled out his trusty harmonica and began to play the national air. Tom could not help laughing to see how they all rose.

“Now’s your chance, sit down, Tom,” said Roy. “The Pied Piper of What’s-his-name hasn’t got anything on me! The object of the puzzle, ladies and gentlemen,” he continued.

“Hear! Hear!”

“Go to it. You’re doing fine!”

“The object of the puzzle,” said Roy, rolling up his sleeves as if he intended to do the puzzle then and there, “the object of the puzzle is to get inside the Ravens’ tent without entering it. Will some gentleman in the audience kindly loan me a high hat and a ten-dollar gold piece? No? Evidently no gentleman in the audience.”

“Cut it out,” said Westy. “They’ll be back in an hour. What are we going to do?”

“We are not going to do anything until the silent hour of midnight,” said Roy. “Then we are going to make reprisals.”

“How do you make those?” called Westy.

“That’s some word, all right,” said Ed.

“I tracked that all the way through the Standard Dictionary,” said Roy.

“How about Mr. Ellsworth?”

“He has announced his policy of strict neutrality,” said Roy. “The field is ours! The obnoxious post-card will be ours if you, brave scouts, will do your part! For one month now has that obnoxious post-card hung in the Ravens’ tent. For one month has Pee-wee Harris smiled his smile and gone unshaved—­I mean unscathed. Shall this go on?”

“No! No!”

“Shall it be said that the Silver Foxes are not Sterling silver but only German silver?”

“Never!”

“Shall the silver of the Silver Foxes be tarnished by that slanderous card?”

“Never!”

“They have called us the ’Follow Afters’—­they have said that we are nothing but ‘Silver Polish’”!

“We’ll rub it into them,” shouted Westy.

“They have taken cowardly refuge in the troop rule that no Silver Fox shall enter their tent except on invitation, and this insertion—­”

“You mean aspersion.”

“Glares forth from the upright of their sordid lair—­”

“‘Sordid lair’ is good!”

“No extra charge,” said Roy; “until now the worm has turned. If we cannot enter their tent then we must take down their tent, remove the card, and put the tent up again.”

“Oh, joy!” said Ed.

“And it must not be done sneakingly in their absence, but to the soft music of their snoring. The enterprise is beset with many dangers. Those who are not willing to venture (as What-do-you-call-him said when he stormed Fort Something-or-other) may stay behind!”

Before camp-fire yarns, an elaborate card was prepared in the privacy of the Silver Foxes’ tent in Roy’s characteristically glaring style, on which appeared the single word, STUNG!

The night for this bold deed had been well chosen. The Ravens had been stalking all day and at camp fire Tom listened wistfully to the account of the day’s most notable stunt which was Pee-wee’s tracking of a muskrat more than half a mile within the required twenty-five minutes of the Second Class provision.

“Pee-wee’ll be the first to jump out of the Tenderfoot Class this summer,” said Mr. Ellsworth, as he poked the crackling fire. “You Silver Foxes will have to get busy.” He looked pleasantly at Tom. “Hey, Tommy?”

“I was wondering,” said Roy, as he stretched himself on the ground close to the cheerful blaze, “if we couldn’t work in something special for next Wednesday—­it’s troop birthday. We’ll be two years old.”

“That’s right, so it is,” said Artie Van Arlen, Raven. “I’m a charter member; the Silver Foxes weren’t even heard of or thought of at that time.”

“No, they’re a lot of upstarts,” said Doc. Carson, the first-aid boy. “You’d think to hear them talk that they started before National Headquarters did. I remember when this troop was a one-ring circus: just us Ravens, and we had some good times too. I had my first-aid badge before those triple-plated Silver Foxes were born!”

“They have no traditions,” said the Ravens’ patrol leader.

“They’re an up-to-date patrol, though,” said Roy. “The Ravens are passe—­like the old Handbook. That kind of patrol was all right when the thing first started; the Silver Foxes are a last year’s model.”

“Well,” laughed Mr. Ellsworth, raking up the fire and drawing his grocery-box seat closer, “maybe the Silver Foxes will be ancient history soon. I’m thinking of a new pack of upstarts for you foxes to make fun of.”

“You haven’t made another flank move on Connie Bennett, have you?” laughed Roy. They were all familiar with Mr. Ellsworth’s dream of another patrol.

“Connie rests his head on a pine cushion and imagines he’s a Boy Scout,” said Artie.

“He blows the dust off a Dan Dreadnought book and imagines it’s the wind howling through the forest,” said Westy.

“He runs the tennis-marker over the lawn and thinks he’s tracking,” said Pee-wee.

“No, not as bad as that, boys,” laughed the scoutmaster. “Between you and me and the camp fire, I suspect Connie’s got the bug.”

“Haven’t given up hope yet?” said Roy.

“Never say die,” answered Mr. Ellsworth, good-naturedly.

Once, twice, thrice had he made a daring assault on the Bennett stronghold and once, twice, thrice had he been gallantly repulsed by the Bennett right wing, which was Mrs. Bennett. He had planted the Bennett veranda with mines in the form of Boys’ Life and Scouting, but all to no avail. Yet his hopeful spirit in regard to the visionary Elk Patrol was almost pathetic.

The tent of the venerable Raven patrol was pitched under a spreading tree and they retired with their proud and ancient traditions, blissfully unaware of the startling liberty which was to be taken with their historic dignity by those upstart Silver Foxes. Mr. Ellsworth, with a commendable application of his policy of strict neutrality, retired to his own tent to dream of the new patrol.

Never in the history of the troop had a Silver Fox trespassed unknown into the ancient privacy of the Ravens, and never had a Raven condescended to enter the Silver Fox stronghold save honorably and by invitation. They knew the Silver Foxes for a sportive crew pervaded by the inventive spirit of Roy Blakeley, but they had no fear of any violation of scout honor and the obnoxious card hung ostentatiously on the central upright of their tent.

In the still hour of midnight the enterprising Silver Foxes emerged in spectral silence from their lair and the battle-cry (or rather, whisper) was “Revenge,” pronounced by Roy as if it had a dozen rattling R’s at the beginning of it. Every boy was keyed to the highest pitch of excitement.

The Ravens’ tent was a makeshift affair of their own manufacture and when its sides were not up it was more of a pavilion than a tent: the Ravens believed in fresh air. There were two forked uprights and across these was laid the ridgepole. The canvas was spread over this and drawn diagonally toward the ground on either side. There were front and back and sides for stormy weather but they were seldom in requisition.

The program, discussed and settled beforehand, was carried out in scout silence, which is about thirty-three and one-third per cent greater than the regular market silence. Tom and Eddie Ingram, being the tallest of the foxes, stationed themselves at either upright, the other members of the patrol lining up along the sides where they loosened the ropes from the pegs. Then Tom and Ed lifted the ridgepole, the scouts along the sides held the canvas high, and the entire patrol moved uniformly and in absolute silence. The tent, intact, was moved from over the sleeping Ravens as the magic carpet of the Arabian Nights was moved. It was a very neat little piece of work and showed with what precision the patrol could act in concert. Thanks partly to their strenuous day of stalking, never a Raven stirred except Doc. Carson, who startled them by turning over.

In the centre of the Ravens’ tent a sapling had been planted, its branches cut away to within several inches of its trunk, so that it made a very passable clothes-tree. This still stood, like a ghostly sentinel, among the slumbering Ravens, laden with their clothes and paraphernalia. The sudden and radical transformation of the scene was quite grotesque and the unsheltered household gods of the Ravens looked ludicrous enough as they lay about in homelike disposition with nothing above them but the stars.

“Great!” whispered Roy, gleefully.

Eddie Ingram laid his end of the ridgepole on the ground and stealing cautiously over among the sleeping Ravens, removed the post card from the sapling and put the other card in its place. Then, stealing back to where the others were waiting, he resumed his end of the pole. This was restored to its place in the forked uprights, the ropes were fastened to the pegs along either side and the Silver Foxes bore Esther Blakeley’s memento of their own disgrace triumphantly to their stronghold.

“Can you beat it?” said Roy, releasing himself with a sense of refreshment from the imposition of silence.

“A scout is stealthy,” remarked Westy.

In the morning Pee-wee sauntered over and paused outside the Silver Foxes’ tent, not saying a word, though.

“Well,” said Roy, “what can we do for you?”

“I see you’ve got the card,” said Pee-wee.

“Yes,” said Westy, pulling on his blouse. “We’re going to frame it and send it to National Headquarters, too, for an exhibition of scout stealth and silence.”

“I suppose you think we walked in and took it,” said Roy, adjusting his belt. “We didn’t. We never entered your tent. A scout is honorable.”

“No,” said Pee-wee, “you took the tent down and put it up wrong end to. A scout is observant. Are we going fishing to-day?”

Chapter XII

“Up Against It for Fair”

When the telegraph and the telephone and the speeding autos and the bullying of the hapless village constable failed to reveal any clue to the burglar at Five Oaks, John Temple proceeded to pooh-pooh the whole business and say that there had never been any burglar, but that in all probability the maid had been exploring Mary’s trinkets just as Mrs. Temple returned and that the “frightful-looking man” whom she had met on the stairs was a myth.

It was then that the maid, groping for any straw in her extremity, said that a boy in khaki had darted out from the pantry and across the private rear lawn into the woods beyond while she stood at the window.

If she had stuck to the plain truth and not permitted Mr. Temple to beat her down as to the man she actually did see on the stairs, a great deal of suffering might have been saved. But the loss of only one trinket, and that one of small intrinsic value, seemed to lend color to the theory that it was the work of a boy rather than of a professional adult burglar, and the master of Five Oaks, thinking this matter worth inquiring into, called up the constable and laid the thing before him in this new light.

Mr. John Temple had no particular grudge against the Boy Scouts. He was a rational, hard-headed business man, decisive and practical and without much imagination. His lack of imagination was, indeed, his main trouble. He was not silly enough and he was extremely too busy to bear any active malice toward an organization having to do with boys, and except when the scouts were mentioned to him he never gave them a thought one way or the other. He was not the archenemy of the movement (as some of the boys themselves thought): he simply had no use for it.

So far as the scout idea had been explained to him by the Bridgeboro Local Council (to whom he had granted five minutes of his time) he thought it consisted of a sort of poetical theory and that money put into it was simply thrown away. He believed, and he told the Council so, that ample provision had been made for boys in the form of circuses and movie plays and baseball games for good ones and reformatories and prisons for bad ones, and he referred, as the successful man is so apt to do, to his own poor boyhood and how he had attended to business and done what was right and so on, and so on, and so on.

Nor had this king of finance cherished any particular resentment toward the poor creature who had thrown a stone at him. John Temple was a big man and he was not petty, but he was intensely practical, and he had no patience with Mr. Ellsworth’s notions for the making of good citizens. He had known two generations of Slades; he had never known any of them to amount to anything, and he believed that the proper place for a hoodlum and a truant and an orphan was in an institution. He paid his taxes for the support of these institutions regularly and he believed they ought to be used for what they were intended for. He thought it was little less than criminal that the son of Bill Slade should be wandering over the face of the earth when he might be legally placed in a dormitory, eating his three meals a day in a white-washed corridor.

For Mr. Ellsworth, John Temple had only contempt. He looked down upon him as the man without imagination always looks down upon the man with imagination. Meanwhile the new subtle spirit was working in Tom Slade and the capitalist had neither the time nor the interest to stoop and watch the wonderful transformation which was going on.

He was not prompted by any feeling of spite or resentment toward Tom and the scouts when he told the constable about “young Slade.” He believed that he was acting wisely and even in Tom’s best interests, and it was in vain that his young daughter tried to pull him away from the telephone. Mrs. Temple weepingly implored him to remember the hospitality and the courtesy which she and Mary had just enjoyed at the hands of the scouts, but it was of no use. If no one had mentioned Tom he would never have thought of him, but since Mary had mentioned him he believed it was a good time to have Mr. Ellsworth’s experiment with Tom looked into before “all the houses in the neighborhood were robbed.” He did not mean that, of course; it was simply his way of talking.

It was the second morning after the Silver Foxes’ proud recovery of Esther Blakeley’s card that a loose-jointed personage from Salmon River Village sauntered into camp, his face screwed up as if he were studying the sun, and surveyed the camp with that frank and leisurely scrutiny which bespeaks the “Rube.” Concealed beneath his coat he wore a badge which he had fished out of an unused cooky-jar just before starting, and it swelled his rural pride to feel the weight of it on his suspender.

“Wha’ose boss here?” he asked Pee-wee, who was about his customary duty of spearing loose papers with a pointed stick.

“No boss,” said Pee-wee.

“Wha’ose runnin’ the shebang?”

Pee-wee pointed to Mr. Ellsworth’s little tent just inside which the scoutmaster sat on an onion-crate stool, writing.

The official personage sauntered over, watched by several boys, paused to inspect the wireless apparatus in its little leanto. His inquisitive manner was rather jarring. By the time he reached Mr. Ellsworth’s tent a little group had formed about him.

“Ya’ou the boss here?”

“Good-morning,” said Mr. Ellsworth.

“Ya’ou the boss?”

“No; the boys are boss; anything we can do for you?”

The stranger looked about curiously. “Got permission t’ camp here, I s’pose.”

“There’s the owner of the property,” said Mr. Ellsworth, laughingly, indicating Roy.

“Hmmm; ye got a young feller here by th’ name o’ Slade?”

“That’s what we have,” said the scoutmaster with his usual breezy pleasantry.

“Well, I reckon I’ll hev ter see him.”

“Certainly; what for?” Mr. Ellsworth asked rather more interested.

“He’s got hisself into a leetle mite o’ trouble,” the stranger drawled; “leastways, mebbe he has.” He seemed to enjoy being mysterious.

So Tom was called. Roy came with him, and all who were in camp at the moment clustered about the scoutmaster’s tent. Mr. Ellsworth’s manner was one of perfect confidence in Tom and half-amusement at the stranger’s relish of his own authority.

“You don’t wish to see him privately, I suppose?”

“Na-o—­leastways not ’less he does. Seems you was trespassing araound Five Oaks t’other day,” he said to Tom in his exasperating drawl, and with deliberate hesitation.

“Good heavens, man!” said Mr. Ellsworth, nettled. “You don’t mean to tell me this boy is charged with trespassing! Why, half a dozen of these boys accompanied Mrs. Temple and her daughter home—­they were invited into the house.” He looked at the stranger, half angry and half amused. “Mrs. Temple and her daughter were our guests here. We might as well say they were trespassing!”

“Leastways they din’t take nuthin’.”

“What do you mean by that?” said the scoutmaster, sharply.

“Ye know a pin was missin’ thar?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Ellsworth, impatiently.

“An’ one o’ these youngsters was seen sneakin’—­”

“Oh, no,” the scoutmaster jerked out; “we don’t do any sneaking here. Be careful how you talk. You are trespassing yourself, sir, if it comes to that.”

There was never a moment in the troop’s history, not even in that unpleasant scene in John Temple’s vacant lot, when the boys so admired their scoutmaster. His absolute confidence in every member of the troop thrilled them with an incentive which no amount of discipline could have inspired. It was plain to see that they felt this—­all save Tom, whose face was a puzzle.

He stood there among them, his belt pulled unnecessarily tight, after the fashion of the boy who has always worn a suspender, the trim intent of the scout regalia hardly showing to advantage on his rather clumsy form. His puttees were never well adjusted; the khaki jacket (when he wore it) had a perverse way of working up in back. He presented a marked contrast to Roy’s natty appearance and to Westy whose uniform fitted him so perfectly that he seemed to have been poured into it as a liquid into a mould. Both boys looked every inch a scout. Yet there was something strangely distinctive about Tom as he stood there. A discerning person might have fancied his uncouthness as part and parcel of a certain rugged quality which could not be expressed in precise attire. There was something ominous in the dogged, sullen look which his countenance wore. He seemed a sort of law unto himself, having a certain resource in himself and seeking now neither advice nor assistance. He was no figure for the cover of the Scout Handbook, yet he had drawn out of it its full measure of strength; he would accept no one’s interpretation of it but his own and thus he stood among them and yet apart—­as good a scout as ever raised his hand to take the oath.

“One o’ these youngsters went daown stairs and raound the haouse t’ th’ pantry ‘n’ he was seen to go without warrant of law crost Temple’s lawn and inter his private woods.” The man had his little spats of legal phraseology, of course, and Mr. Ellsworth could almost have murdered him for his “without warrant of law.”

“Any one of you boys go ’without warrant of law’?” asked the scoutmaster, with an air of humorous disgust.

“I did,” said Tom simply.

The scoutmaster looked at him in surprise.

“What for, Tom?”

There was a moment’s silence.

“I’ve got nothing to say,” said Tom.

Doc. Carson, who was of all things observant, noticed a set appearance about Tom’s jaw and a far-away look in his eyes as if he neither knew nor cared about any of those present.

“I s’pose if we was to search ye we wouldn’t find nothin’ on ye t’ shouldn’t be thar?”

“I am a scout of the sec—­I am a scout,” said Tom, impassively. “No one will search me.”

It would be hard to describe the look in Mr. Ellsworth’s eyes as he watched Tom. There was confidence, there was admiration, but withal an almost pathetic look of apprehension and suspense. He studied Tom as a pilot fixes his gaze intently upon a rocky shore. Tom did not look at him.

“Ye wouldn’t relish bein’ searched, I reckon?” the constable said with an exasperating grin of triumph.

Then the thunderbolt fell. Calmly Tom reached down into his pocket and brought forth the little class pin.

“I know what you want,” he said. “I didn’t know first off, but now I know. You couldn’t search me—­I wouldn’ leave—­let you. I could handle a marshal, and I’m stronger now than I was then. But you can’t search me; you can’t disgrace my patrol by searchin’ them—­or by searchin’ me —­’cause I wouldn’t lea—­let you. Get away from me!” with such frantic suddenness that they started. “Don’t you try to take it from me! I’m a scout of—­I’m a scout—­mind! Where’s Roy?”

“Tom,” said Mr. Ellsworth, his voice tense with emotion.

“Where’s Roy?” the boy asked, ignoring him.

Roy stepped forward as he had done once before when Tom was in trouble, and they made an odd contrast. “Here, Tom.”

“You take it an’ give it to Mary Temple and tell her it’s tossin’ it back—­kind of. She’ll know what I mean. You know how to go to places like that—­but they get me scared. Tell her it’s instead of the rubber ball, and that I sent it to her.”

“Oh, Tom,” said Mr. Ellsworth, his voice almost breaking, “is that all you have to say—­Tom?”

“I’m a scout—­I’m obeyin’ the law—­that’s all,” said Tom, doggedly. He seemed to be the only one of them all who was not affected, so sure did he feel of himself.

“Do I have to get arrested?” said he.

“Ye-es, I reckon I’ll hev to take ye ’long,” said the constable, advancing.

Tom never flinched.

Roy tried to speak but could only say, “Tom—­”

Mr. Ellsworth put his palm to his forehead and held it there a moment as if his head throbbed.

“Can I have my book?” Tom asked as the constable, taking his arm, took a step away.

It was Pee-wee who glided, scout pace, over to the Silver Foxes’ tent. In the unusual situation it never occurred to him that he, a Raven, was entering it uninvited. Esther Blakeley’s triumphant post card hung there but he never noticed it. He brought the well-thumbed Handbook with T. S. on it, and it was curious to see that he gave it to Roy instead of to Tom.

But Tom noticed his bringing it. “I’m glad you did your tracking stunt, Pee-wee,” he said, with just a little quiver in his voice.

Roy handed him the book. Then, just as they started off, Mr. Ellsworth, gathering himself together as one coming out of a trance, accosted the departing constable.

“This boy was placed in my charge by the court in Bridgeboro,” said he, holding the man off.

“That don’t make no difference,” drawled the man. “I got a right to go anywheres for a fugitive or a suspect. A guardian writ wouldn’t be no use to ye in a criminal charge.” And he smiled as if he were perfectly willing to explain the law for the benefit of the uninitiated.

Tom, clutching his Handbook, walked along at the man’s side. He seemed utterly indifferent to what was happening.

There were no camp-fire yarns that night.