his first thought was to go to the archer farm, but he realized that he had no money to do that. and if he were going to keep his promise to old pop winters, he must not go home; indeed he had not the money to do that either, for his precious five dollars was pledged.
other boys had been discredited at temple camp, but these had fallen foul of the management, not of the scout body. no guest at camp had ever presented such a pitiful picture as wilfred, as he stood irresolute in the woods below the bridgeboro cabins with nothing whatever about him to connect him with scouting. in the woods he looked singularly out of place in his plain suit, his suit-case in one hand and his overcoat over the opposite arm. most boys departing from temple camp went away resplendent in scout regalia and howling out of the windows of the catskill bus.
he went to the commissary shack where tom slade had lately been busy assorting and piling camp provisions and paraphernalia. in the semidarkness of this place he encountered tom alone and told him all there was to tell.
“why the suit-case?” tom asked.
“i had to take my things away from there.”
for some reason or other, which no living mortal can explain, wilfred had not told tom nor any one else of his kindly plan in connection with pop winters. he was not ashamed of what he was going to do, but he seemed ashamed to tell of it.
“well,” said tom, lifting himself up onto a packing case and forcing a patience which he did not feel, “that’s strike two. and i thought when we came up here that you were going to knock a home run.”
“i guess home is the right word,” said wilfred.
“yes, if you want to be a quitter,” said tom.
“there don’t seem to be any more patrols for me to go into,” wilfred observed cynically.
“you didn’t think it worth while to tell them, did you?” tom asked wearily. “i mean that you have something the matter with you.”
“there’s nothing the matter with me,” wilfred said proudly. it was odd how such a fine spirit could bear misjudgment and humiliation. he seemed to feel that the greatest disgrace of all was having some physical weakness. “do you think i’m an archie dennison?” he demanded.
“no, not quite as bad as that,” tom laughed.
“it’s only on account of you i feel bad; i don’t care about anybody else,” said wilfred.
“i should think you’d care about the elks,” tom said rather coldly; “they’re pretty nice fellows. you left them up in the air—guessing. what do you expect? do you think everybody is to be sacrificed just because you don’t want folks to know you have to be careful about your health?”
“don’t you worry about my health,” said wilfred.
“well,” said tom, “talk isn’t going to get us anywhere. i have to take you as i find you. you’re here on my award——”
“what do you mean?”
“well, you’re here as my guest. and i’m not going to have my guest pulling out before the game’s over. i’m not going to have you going home and let your sister think you’re a quitter.”
“you seem to think more about my sister than you do about me,” said wilfred.
this was a pretty good shot and it silenced tom for a moment. “well,” he finally said, “i don’t seem to get you, but i suppose it’s my fault. i don’t know any patrol i could wish you onto now; you’re queered. the best thing you can do is to bunk in the pavilion and just hang around and help me, and along about the first drop in and see the doc. wasn’t that what doctor brent said? he may tell you you’re all right, but you see, billy, that won’t square you with the crowd. you’ve flopped twice——”
“they say three strikes out,” said wilfred, with rueful humor.
“well, they’re not likely to give you another chance at the bat,” said tom. “you can’t blame these fellows——”
“i blame two of them,” said wilfred, grimly.
tom ignored this dark reference. “well,” said he, “they won’t do any worse than ignore you; you just bat around and amuse yourself and keep up your stalking, that’s good, and get some benefit out of the country. i don’t want you chasing home, i know that.”
this, then, was wilfred’s lot during the days that immediately followed. he slept in the pavilion among the unattached boys, and a queer lot they were. some of them were very young, others very delicate; all were under the particular care of the management. they were immune from the exactions of troop discipline and obligation. but it would be unfair to them to say that they were of the brand of archie dennison. nothing was likely to happen to ostracize wilfred from this group.
as for the other boys, they looked on him with contempt; the banter stage was past and the whole camp body joined with the ravens and the elks in ignoring him. they did not think of him so much as a traitor or a coward, but as a “bluffer.” allison berry, the only one who might have disproved this belief, was gone, and his vociferous defense of wilfred forgotten. wandering willie was just a bluff, a boy who had pretended that he was a swimmer when in plain fact he could not swim or do anything else. temple camp was no place for bluffers. to bluff the honest and simple elks seemed peculiarly contemptible.
wilfred was not accorded the tribute of being disliked, he was simply ignored. he was one of the pavilion crowd—he was nothing. when scouts did speak of him they called him wandering willie, which was a harmless enough nickname.
