“Well, that would be a hard joke on them,” Alec declared. “Send me with any message, Hugh. You and Bud had better make a break for home, and get out of your wet clothes in a hurry.”
“All right then, Alec,” the other told him. “Take the order that they’re to give up work for to-night and get away home. And perhaps you’d better not say anything about what happened here in too big a hurry. We’ll speak of it at the next meeting. I think there’s a lesson in it for every scout. I know I feel that I’ve had one myself.”
“Huh! think of me, will you?” declared Bud with a sigh. “Even when Arthur yelled out that Smith was drowning, I was so scared that for just five seconds I couldn’t move hand or foot. That might have been long enough for him to disappear the last time. But you shot past me and into the river like a flash. You haven’t a single thing to be sorry for, Hugh. And let me tell you, for one, I’ll never stop thanking my lucky stars that you got here just when you did. I’d be feeling some different from what I am right now if you’d delayed a minute longer.”
Alec ran off to carry the scout master’s order to the rest of the troop that would relieve them from vidette duty, while the balance of the boys started for their various homes, satisfied with the outcome of the series of adventures.
“Well, things seem to be moving right along, Hugh,” Billy Worth remarked several days later, as he and the assistant scout master stood on the main street in front of the window where there was a fine display of sporting goods that always attracted the attention of every passing boy.
“Yes, it’s wonderful what a change has come over the whole town,” the other scout remarked. “It seems as though the scouts must have given everybody the fever, because it’s going on all around. Even the Italian district has been stirred, for the mayor has offered a splendid prize to the family that has the neatest dooryard on the first of the month. Such a scrubbing and raking and gathering of rubbish never was seen before. Poor old Barney Heath says he’s earned his salary three times over, and that if this thing gets to be a settled habit he must be paid by the load and not by the month under contract. He’ll soon be going to the poorhouse, he vows. But it looks glorious to me, Billy.”