"No Loyal Scout gives place to doubt, But action quick he shows!"
The song, his own, the original march-song of his troop, sang itself through Stud's brain, seethed in the low whistle upon his lips, as, guided by his ruby breast-eye, he slid down into that strange and secret dungeon in which the black passage ended and, thrusting his sturdy shoulders under the pendent body of the victim whose convulsed hands clutched vainly at the bare slab, raised it so that the choking boy could breathe freely again--and in due time shake off the dizziness of his awful plight, hung up by the heels by the rock itself.
But not until the Scoutmaster came to his patrol leader's assistance could those pinioned feet be really freed and their owner brought to daylight again, not by a return via the fissure route, but hoisted in a rope-noose, as Pem had been from the Devil's Chair, through a grass-covered opening discoverable in the roof of that inner cave.
"Goodness! after all, he wasn't so much more foolish--headstrong--than I was. But Una! Una! If you ever-r tell them!" Thus did the maiden of the chowchow name spill her spice into her friend's ear,--burning spice, for, privately, she was shocked at seeing her own folly, parodied, vulgarized, as it were.
"Well! I should say! He was hanging between hawk and buzzard--if ever a fellow was," happened to be Stud's moved comment as, clinging to that lowered rope, he was hoisted, too, through that covert opening, the loyal little lamp upon his breast paling now into a penny candle held towards the sun.
It burnished the picnic luncheon which followed, encircling, rainbow-like, little Jessie who basked in it more than did the rebellious hero, pelted with wild flowers by the girls--as symbolic of other bouquets.
"Oh! let up--let up--will you? Those big fellows will take me for the 'goat'--somebody's 'goat'!" protested Stud helplessly, striving to direct attention from himself by training it upon a straggling group of distant youths, really too far off to take stock of what was going on among the merry picnic party.
But Pemrose was taking stock of them. Her widening eyes, her reddening cheeks, the little piqued shiver that electrified her chin, told that one figure--one figure--called for recognition; called for it, indeed, so loudly that it couldn't be denied him.