was she who was his good friend; it was to her he owed the
invitation which had come to him with such a fine air of sincerity.

"I always--crinkums, anyway girls always seem to like me, that's one
thing," he said. "And--and Roy did, too, before Tom Slade came into the
troop."

It was odd how he turned against Tom, making him the scapegoat for Roy's
apparent selfishness and hypocrisy.

"They just brought me along for charity, like," he said, "'cause she
told them to. Cracky, anyway, I didn't try to make her do that--I
didn't."

This revelation in black and white of Roy's real feeling overcame him
and as he put the letter back in the book and the book back in the
duffel bag, he could scarcely keep his hand from trembling.

"Anyway, I knew it all the time," he said. "I could see it."

He had no appetite for rice cakes now. He took some cakes of chocolate
and a couple of hard biscuits and stuffed them in his pocket. Then he
went out into the cockpit and listened. There was no sound of voices or
footfalls, nothing but the myriad voices of nature, or frogs croaking
nearby, of a cheery cricket somewhere on shore, of the water lapping
against the broken old wharf as the wind drove it in shoreward.

He returned to the cabin, tore a leaf from his scout notebook and wrote,
but he had to blink his eyes to keep back the tears.

"Dear Roy:

"I think you'll have more fun if you two go the rest of the way
alone. I always said two's a company, three's a crowd. You've heard
me say it and I ought to have had sense enough to remember it. But
anyway, I'm not mad and I like you just as much. I'll see you at
camp.

"WALTER HARRIS."

"P. S.--If I had to vote again for patrol leader I'd vote for you."

He was particular not to mention Tom by name and to address his note to
Roy. He laid it in the frying pan on the stove (in which he had
intended to make the rice cakes) and then, with his duffel bag over his
shoulder and his scout staff in hand, he stepped from the _Good Turn_,
listening cautiously for approaching footsteps, and finding the way
clear he stole away through the darkness.

CHAPTER X

PEE-WEE'S ADVENTURE

A walk of a few yards or so brought him to the railroad track. He was no
longer the clown and mascot of the _Good Turn_; he was the scout, alert,
resourceful, bent on hiding his tracks.

He did not know where he was going, more than that he was going to elude
pursuit and