their schoolmates.

Just about then, if the assistant scout master had called for volunteers,
he could have filled two complete additional patrols with candidates; for
the fellows began to realize that the scouts were having three times as
much fun as any one else.

But Paul was too wise for that. He believed in selecting the right sort
of boys, and not taking every one who offered his name, just because he
wanted to have a good time. These fellows would not be able to live up to
the iron-clad rules that scouts have got to subscribe to, and which are
pretty much covered in the twelve cardinal principles which, each boy
declares in the beginning, he will try and govern his life by--"to be
trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient,
cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent."

Some of the scouts were at Headquarters, as the room under the church was
called, getting the supplies there in order, to take down to the boats
later on, when they were surprised to have a visitor in the shape of old
Peleg Growdy.

This man lived just outside the town limits, on the main road. He had
once kept his wagon yard in a very disgraceful condition, much to the
disgust of the women folks of Stanhope. The boys, too, looked upon Peleg
as a crusty old fellow, who hated their kind.

He had done something to offend one of the scouts, and it was proposed
that they play some sort of trick on the old fellow in order to pay him
back; but Paul ventured to say that if the scouts went in a body to his
place, when he was asleep, and cleaned up his wagon yard so that it