ought
I'd dropped my handkerchief somewhere, but afterwards I found it inside
my hat, you know."

"Sure, it's always that way," muttered Giraffe, who lay with his eyes
closed, but drinking in all that was said.

"Well," continued Step Hen, "all at once I noticed something that
interested me a whole lot. There was one of them queer little
tumble-bugs you always see ashovin' round balls along the road, an'
goin' somewhere that nobody ever yet found out. This critter was tryin'
like all possessed to push his ball up a steep little place in the
road. Sometimes he'd get her close to the top, and then lose his grip;
when it'd roll all the way back again.

"Say, boys, that insect's pluck interested me a heap, now, I'm tellin'
you. Right there I got one of the best lessons a scout ever picked up in
all his life; which was the old story, 'if at first you don't succeed,
try, try again.' And he kept on tryin' again and again. I must a stayed
there all of half an hour, just watchin' that game little critter
pushin' his ball up against the hardest luck ever. And then, when I just
couldn't stand it any longer I took bug and ball in my hand, and put 'em
both up on top of that rise. And after that I thought I had a right to
turn my badge right-side up!"

The scouts looked at each other. Somehow, they did not laugh, though
surely it must have been one of the queerest reasons ever advanced by a
fellow-scout, as an excuse for wearing his badge honorably.

Despite its grotesque nature, there was also something rather pathetic
about the thought of Step Hen, only a careless, half-grown lad at best,
spending a whole lot of time, simply watching an humble but game little
beetle trying to fight against hard luck, and almost as interested in
the outcome as the wretched bug itself.

"How about that, Mr. Scoutmaster; is Step entitled to wear his badge
that way, on account of helping that silly little bug climb his
mountain?" asked Davy, turning to Thad; but though his words might seem
to indicate a touch of scorn, there was certainly nothing of the sort in
his manner.

Thad himself had been amused, and deeply interested, in Step Hen's
recital. Only too well did he know what a careless and indifferent
fellow the boy had ordinarily been classed, both at school and at home.
Seldom, if ever, had he paid the least attention to things that were
happening all around him, and which might appeal to the sympathies of
boys who were made of finer gra