plan and colour scheme to be followed in executing this costume. Master Pope, will you kindly pass out these copies to your mates?"

   This done and the members being warned to have their uniforms speedily ready, I announced that on the following Thursday we should embark on our first invasion of the forest primeval, going for a camping

   expedition of three days to the shores of Hatcher's Lake, a body of water situate, as I had previously ascertained, a distance of forty miles by rail from the city and four miles more from the station at Hatchersville, a small village.

   "We shall proceed to this obscure hamlet on the steam cars," I explained, "and thence to our appointed place afoot, bearing our camp baggage and other

    accoutrements

   with us."

   With an uplifted hand I checked the outburst that was about to follow this announcement.

   "Remember, please, the proprieties!" I said. "Now then, all together, after me: Huzza! Huzza! Huzza!—Tiger!"

   As the echoes died away Master Horrigan spoke:

   "How about tents?" he said.

   "How about a cook?" This came from Master E. Smith, the stouter of the two Smiths with an i.

   "How about cots?" This last speaker, as I recall, was Master MacMonnies.

   Other questions of a similar tenor volleyed on me from all quarters.

   For a space of time measurable by minutes I was quite taken aback. So engrossed had I been with the costume, with acquiring skill at swimming, and with ordering from Boston a genuine English yew bow and a sheaf of arrows, that until this moment these lesser details had entirely escaped my attention; but at once my mind was at work on the situation.

   I recalled that in the work by Mr. Hough, entitled, "The Complete Boy Camper," of which, as I have remarked before, I already had a copy by me, there was a chapter describing how a balmy couch, far superior to any ordinary bed, might be constructed of the boughs of the spruce, the hemlock, the 

 Prev. P 15/112 next