his remnant of sandwich and hurled it out into the dark world, the boy
up in the little room went on reading with hungry eyes, and that is all
there was to that.

Peter belonged to no troop, for in that lonely country there was no
troop to belong to. He had no scoutmaster, no one to track and stalk and
go camping with, no one to jolly him as Pee-wee had. Away off in
National Headquarters he was registered as a pioneer scout. He had his
certificate, he had his handbook, that is all. It is said in that book
that a scout is a brother to every other scout, but this scout's
brothers were very far away and he had never seen any of them. He
wondered what they looked like in their trim khaki attire. He could
hardly hope to see them, but he did dare to hope that somehow or other
he might strike up a correspondence with one of them. He had heard of
pioneer scouts doing that.

In his loneliness he pictured scouts seated around a camp-fire telling
yarns. He knew that sometimes these wonderful and fortunate beings with
badges up and down their arms went tracking in pairs, that there was
chumming in the patrols. He might sometime or other induce Abner Corning
to become a pioneer scout and chum with him. But this seemed a Utopian
vision for Abner lived seven miles away and had hip disease and lived in
a wheel-chair.

Peter had a rich uncle who lived in New York and took care of a building
and got, oh as much as thirty dollars a week. The next time this rich
uncle came to visit he was going to ask him if he had seen any real
scouts with khaki suits and jack-knives dangling from their belts and
axes hanging on their hips.