good whack. We tried to get another, but
scoutmasters were pretty scarce; they were scarcer than coal and sugar.
They were all in France. So I took the job. I suppose we could get one
now, but since we've worried along all this time without one, we decided
to wait till our scoutmaster gets back. He'll be back in a couple of weeks,
I understand, and we want to give him a welcome. We've got two dollars and
fourteen cents toward it so far-two dollars and four cents, really, because
there's a Canadian dime. If there are any Canadian dimes around, we're sure
to get them. Then our little shanty burned down. It was about the best
camp-fire I ever saw, only it left us without a meeting-place. We still
have our scout smiles; they don't cost anything. If they did, we couldn't
afford them."

I said, "That's one thing about scout smiles; they're the only things that
haven't gone up."

"So here we are," he said, "hiking back home after one of our fool
enterprises. We intended to go down on the train, but we went to the
circus instead."

"It's about thirty miles down to Newburgh," I said; "you'll have to
bivouac twice anyway."

He said, "I guess we've got eats enough."

"We might as well all hike that far together," I told him.

"Good idea," he said, "if you don't mind chumming up with a traveling
poor-house."

"We should worry about being poor," I said; "I know a man that's rich and
he can't hike at all. He goes on crutches. How would you like to be him?
Anyway, don't you fellows get discouraged."

"Don't worry," he said; "first it was hard, but now we've come to like it.
You can get a lot of fun out of hard luck. And all we need is time, I
suppose. This winter we're all going to work on Saturdays. Trouble is that
isn't going to help us give our scoutmaster a _welcome home_. We've done
more crazy things this summer trying to get a little money together! I
guess it would have been better if we'd all knuckled down to jobs. But I
wanted these poor kids to get a taste of scouting. Too late now, anyway.
Why if I told you why we hiked up to Elm Center, you'd just laugh in my
face. You'd say we were crazy. But we've had a good time anyway."

I said, "One thing sure, everything will come out all right and it's better
to go on a hike and camping and all that in the summer than to be working
in the city. One of those fellows ahead of us is named Dorry Benton and
he's kind of--not exactly poor, but--Anyway, he's crazy to get a motorc