ers, too, and I'm goin' to make me a camera out o' that
little starch-box and a bakin'-powder can that's goin' to be a mighty
good ole camera. We can do lots more things--"

"Yay!" Sam cried. "Let's get started!" He paused. "Wait a minute,
Penrod. Verman says he won't--"

"Well, he's got to!" said Penrod.

"I momp!" Verman insisted, almost distinctly.

They began to argue with him; but, for a time, Verman remained firm.
They upheld the value of dramatic consistency, declaring that a beater
dressed as completely as he was "wouldn't look like anything at all". He
would "spoil the whole biznuss", they said, and they praised Herman
for the faithful accuracy of his costume. They also insisted that the
garment in question was much too large for Verman, anyway, having been
so recently worn by Herman and turned over to Verman with insufficient
alteration, and they expressed surprise that "anybody with any sense"
should make such a point of clinging to a misfit.

Herman sided against his brother in this controversy, perhaps because a
certain loneliness, of which he was censcious, might be assuaged by the
company of another trouserless person--or it may be that his motive was
more sombre. Possibly he remembered that Verman's trousers were his own
former property and might fit him in case the promise for five o'clock
turned out badly. At all events, Verman finally yielded under great
pressure, and consented to appear in the proper costume of the multitude
of beaters it now became his duty to personify.

Shouting, the boys dispersed to begin the preparation of their jungle
scene. Sam and Penrod went for branches and the dead tree, while Herman
and Verman carried the panther in his cage to the loft, where the
first thing that Verman did was to hang his trousers on a nail in a
conspicuous and accessible spot near the doorway. And with the arrival
of Penrod and Sam, panting and dragging no inconsiderable thicket after
them, the coloured brethren began to take a livelier interest in things.
Indeed, when Penrod, a little later, placed in their hands two spears,
pointed with tin, their good spirits were entirely restored, and they
even began to take a pride in being properly uncostumed beaters.

Sam's gun and Penrod's camera were entirely satisfactory, especially the
latter. The camera was so attractive, in fact, that the hunter and the
chief beater and all the other beaters immediately resigned and insisted
upon being photographe