ar that, Anthony?"

Anthony began to look sick. "I'll do it tomorrow," he said.

"No, you'll not!" said Slim. "You'll do it right here and now before all
these folks."

Anthony looked beseechingly at Uncle Teddy, but the latter was looking
at him sternly. "You brought it upon yourself," he said. "Now either
make good your boast or take the alternative."

Slim filled the cup and handed it to Anthony. "I bet I can do it," he
said defiantly, and set it to his lips. With the first mouthful his face
puckered up. The soup was red hot with pepper. He himself had sprinkled
a generous quantity into the kettle after touching up his own cupful.
But he had been more generous than he knew.

"I can't drink that stuff," he sputtered. "It's all pepper."

"That doesn't make any difference," said Slim, unmoved. "Drink it
anyway."

And they made him do it. Cupful after cupful they forced upon him,
threatening an immediate diet of soap whenever he paused. After the
fifth cup Anthony began to suspect that it was not wise to make rash
statements about the capacity of the human stomach; after the sixth he
was entirely convinced. The results of that sixth cup made the judges
decide to suspend the last of the sentence. Anthony had got all that was
coming to him.

A sorrier or more subdued boy never lived than Anthony that night.

"It was heroic treatment," said Uncle Teddy thoughtfully to Aunt Clara,
as they wandered off by themselves in the moonlight, "but it took
something like that to make any impression on him. He is the most
insufferable little braggart that ever lived. I only hope the impression
made was deep enough."

And beyond a doubt it was, for never again was Anthony heard to utter a
boast in the presence of the rest.

CHAPTER IX

THE DARK OF THE MOON SOCIETY

Gladys stood in her tent under the big murmuring pine tree washing
handkerchiefs in her washbasin. "I haven't enough left to last any
time at all now," she confided plaintively to Sahwah, "and I had three
dozen when I came. They're all gone where the good handkerchiefs go, I
guess. Somebody is forever getting cut and needing a bandage in a hurry
and my handkerchief is invariably the one to be sacrificed to the
emergency."

"That's what you get for always having a clean one," remarked Sahwah.
"Mine are never in fit condition to be used for bandages, consequently I
still have them all."

"But you never know where they are," said Gladys. "If you don't