didn't try for it."

"You should worry about me," I said, "I can swim, but _good night_, I'm
not in the contest class. And maybe you're not either, so don't be too
sure."

He said, "I'm going to win them the cup, and I'm going to win them the
badge. But I don't have to get to be a first class scout guy to win the
cup, I don't. It's made of silver. Once my father stole a lot of
silver. It's all fancy, that cup."

"I know all about the cup, Alf," I said; (because, gee, I didn't like
to be calling him Skinny) "but don't call the fellows scout guys. Just
scouts--that's enough." He just looked at me kind of wild, as if he
didn't understand, the same as he always did when anybody called him
down, or tried to tell him something.

For a few minutes nobody spoke and we just rowed around. Then Westy
said, "So that's their game, is it?"

I knew well enough what he meant. Every season Mr. Temple offers a
silver cup to the best swimmer at Temple Camp. Once Mr. Temple had a
son who got drowned because he couldn't swim, and that's why he's so
interested in fellows being good swimmers. That silver cup hasn't got
anything to do with the scout swimming badge. You can't win that
(anyway they won't give it to you) till you've passed your first class
tests. But anybody can try for the silver cup, and you can bet it's a
big honor for any troop or patrol to have that. Most always they have
the contest on Labor Day.

I said, "Alf, you can bet I'd be glad to see you win that cup, but
don't forget that there are more than a hundred fellows at the camp.
Some of the troops come from the seashore--you know that, and they're
all crackerjack swimmers. It comes mighty hard to be disappointed, so
don't you stay awake at night thinking about it." I said that because I
could just see that poor kid dreaming about handing that cup over to
his patrol leader, and honestly, I didn't think there was much chance
for him.

Pretty soon Bert Winton leaned over and said to me, "Do you suppose
that's true about his father?"

"Guess so," I told him.

"He doesn't seem to be very much ashamed of it," he said.

All I could say was, "He's a queer kid; he's all the time blurting out
things like that."

"Maybe it's because he's just plain honest," Winton said.

"But you'd think he'd be ashamed," I told him.

He just shrugged his shoulders and looked kind of funny at Skinny. I
had a kind of a hunch that he liked him and believed in him. Anyway, I
remember