play, nor the
neighborhood of their joyous labor transformed into a scene of rustic
comfort.

By the merest chance the scouts had come and seen and conquered, and
presently the scene had that wholesome air of scout life about it. It
seemed to poor Blythe as if he had awakened and found himself in
fairyland, with a score or more of small brown gnomes climbing and
scrambling about his domain, singing, jollying, planning, laughing,
working, cooking, eating, kindling big camp-fires with odds and ends of
wood, and telling such nonsensical yarns as he had never heard before.
Pee-wee and Roy in particular amused him greatly. "Go on, make fun of
him," he would say to Roy. And then he would deliberately take sides
with Pee-wee against the whole troop. But he was more prone to listen
than to talk.

"Haven't you got any adventures to tell?" Pee-wee asked him around
camp-fire one night.

"Sure," said Roy, "look in your pockets and see if you can't find a
couple."

"I guess I'm not much of a hand for adventures," Blythe laughed. "I like
to hear about them though."

"I'll tell you some," Pee-wee said. "I'll tell you how I found a
wallet--"

"And a dime," Westy interrupted.

"Tell how you saved a fish from drowning at Temple Camp," Roy said.

"Sure, that's a fish story," Connie piped up.

So Pee-wee launched forth recounting instances from his career of glory
at Temple Camp, the boys prompting and jollying him, all to the simple
delight of their new friend. His enjoyment seemed always an incentive to
banter and nonsense....

CHAPTER XI

YOUNG MR. BLYTHE

It was soon apparent to the scouts that their coming had saved the
enterprise for Blythe. He would not have been able to superintend the
job with other helpers and even with the scouts he was rather their
companion than their leader.

His attempts at sustained labor were pitiful. Yet he was never idle. But
he moved from one unfinished task to another, never realizing apparently
that each job he started was left undone. He was quite unequal to the
harder part of the work, and the scouts, both kind and observant, could
see that, and were content to let him gather and pile the fallen lumber
and sometimes to rake up the smaller pieces for their evening fire,
which he looked forward to with keen delight. What was the matter with
him, they did not know. But this they did know, that he was their friend
and that he took a kind of childish delight in their camping.