"Why, he spent the day of his life, you know. He had made up his mind in the beginning that he would never come back. Then at noon he determined that a whole month would give his folks a good scare. The afternoon hung on terribly. Minutes seemed hours, and at last he just couldn't stand it any longer. He had spent his last penny, but it was getting night, and he had never been without a home in the dark before."
"Yes, I can understand that, because once I did it too," laughed Mark; "but don't mind me, Elmer, go right along with the story. What happened to him?"
"Nothing. That's where the fun came in," replied the other. "You see his folks understood that kid, and they just made up their minds to punish him by not paying the slightest attention to him. So he came sneaking into the sitting room where dad was reading the paper, and mom was knitting. Neither of them even looked at him. He thought that mighty queer, when he had expected to be hugged and kissed and cried over like one who had been lost a year.
"After a long time, when he had coughed, and moved about without either of them paying the slightest attention to him, the boy was struck with an idea. He would say something that _must_ make them realize the near calamity that had happened. So he bent down to stroke the back of the old tabby that was purring by the fire, and he says, says he:
"'Oh! I see you still have the same old cat you used to have when I was home!'"
"I get the point, Elmer, all right, and I guess it applies to a few of our fellows, but on the whole they've acted just fine. A better bunch of good-hearted boys it would be hard to find anywhere. And I tell you this outing's going to do every mother's son of them a heap of good. What they learn in this camp will pay a dozen times over for the trouble it's taken. I hope Mr. Garrabrant gets safely down to Rockaway with his boatload of human freight. Perhaps there won't be a sensation in Hickory Ridge when the news gets out that the Boy Scouts captured those bad men, and sent them to the police of Rockaway with their compliments. I guess that's going some for a new organization of tenderfeet scouts, eh?"
"I should say yes," replied the young scout leader, emphatically. "And after all, we've only got one more mystery to solve to have the slate clear."