Anyway, how did _you_ happen to come here?" he
asked as if in sudden fear.
"I was just taking a walk through the woods, Skinny."
Skinny continued to stare at him, still with a kind of lingering
misgiving, but feeling that gentle patting on his shoulder, he seemed
reassured.
"I was just flopping around in the woods, Skinny; just flopping around,
that's all...."
CHAPTER XV
SKINNY'S TRIUMPH
And that was the triumph of Hervey Willetts, who would let nothing stand
in his way. "_Nothing!_"
A hundred yards or so more and the stalking badge would have been won,
and with it the Eagle award. The bicycle that he had longed for would
have been his. The troop which in its confidence had commissioned him to
win this high honor would have gone wild with joy. Hervey Willetts would
have been the only Eagle Scout at Temple Camp save Tom Slade, and, of
course, Tom didn't count.
Yet, strangely enough, the only eagle that Hervey Willetts thought of
now was the eagle which he had driven off--the bird of prey. To have
killed little Skinny's hope and dispelled his almost insane joy would
have made Hervey Willetts feel just like that eagle which had aroused
his wrath and reckless courage. "Not for mine," he muttered to himself.
"Slady was right when he said he wasn't so stuck on eagles. He's a queer
kind of a duck, Slady is; a kind of a mind reader. You never know just
what he means or what he's thinking about. I can't make that fellow out
at all.
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