as school is over." Not one of them seemed troubled by the problem which
worried him.

"How about you, Dale?" asked the scoutmaster, after jotting down Vedder's
prompt acquiescence.

"I--don't know, sir."

"What's the trouble? Want to talk it over at home?" said the scoutmaster,
dropping his voice.

"N-o, sir. They'll let me go all right," answered Dale, adding, in a
still lower tone, "only I--I'm not sure about the--money."

Mr. Curtis nodded understandingly. "I see. Well, there will be at least
two weeks before even the first crowd goes. We'll have to get together
and think up ways and means."

He passed on, leaving Dale not very greatly encouraged. It would be
like Mr. Curtis to invent some work about his place whereby the scout
might earn the required amount, but Dale was determined to stay at home
rather than take advantage of the scoutmaster in that way.

"He's done enough for me already," the boy said to himself with a
stubborn squaring of the jaws. "If I can't raise the funds some other
way, I'll just have to go without camp."

That night he lay long awake, trying to think of some possible method,
but his efforts were not very successful. He still had his paper-route,
but the money from that went mostly into the family treasury. He might,
and probably would, get some odd jobs during the next two weeks, but
there was only grass cutting, now, or weeding gardens, and neither of
these chores was particularly well paid in Hillsgrove.

On the whole the outlook was distinctly discouraging, and for the next
few days Dale had a struggle to maintain his usual cheerfulness. For
months he had looked forward to camp as the supreme culmination of a
more than usually happy year.

"It doesn't seem as if I _could_ give it up!" he muttered rebelliously at
the end of a day which had brought him just twenty cents for a laborious
weeding job. "Oh, gee! If I'd only started to save for it sooner, I--"
He broke off and bit his lips. Presently a crooked smile struggled
defiantly through the gloom. "Oh, thunder!" he exclaimed whimsically.
"Quit your grouching, Dale Tompkins. If you're going to let a little
matter like earning ten dollars stand between you and a corking good
time, you're no kind of a scout at all."

CHAPTER XIX

THE ACCIDENT

It was on Thursday morning that Mr. Curtis sent for Dale, and in
spite of his suspicions the boy brightened a little as he entered
the scoutmaster's study and noticed the sm