“Even if he had to fight to get peace,” chuckled Step Hen.
“But seems tuh me if this heah thing goes on it mout make the boys kinder timid. We needs brave men, such as kin go tuh war if need be. I jest don’t know how thet’ll turn out, son.”
“Well, I do,” said the young scout-master, firmly. “I’ve had considerable experience with boys who became scouts. I’ve known lots of them who waked up and became just the opposite to what they used to be. I’ve seen them stop going through the world as though they were wearing horse’s blinders, and then they found a thousand things that had been around them all the while, but they hadn’t known it before. I’ve started them on the way to studying the habits of the birds, fishes, animals and insects to be met with in the woods and waters until they seemed to live in a different world. I’ve watched sleepy, dull boys change into wide-awake, alert scouts, surprising their parents and teachers in school by the new interest they took in life. But Mr. Smith, I give you my word that I never yet knew of a true blue scout who was a coward!”
“Hear! hear!” cried Bob White, clapping his hands with delight.
“In fact,” continued Thad, enthusiastically, “I’ve watched more than a few boys who were known to be next door to cowards, change into resolute fellows, brave and self-reliant. One went into a burning house and saved an old man at the risk of his own life. Another stopped a runaway horse with as much skill as a policeman educated for the business might have shown.
“I knew of another who saved a drowning chum, and I could tell you about a boy who hung on to a thief who was robbing a woman on the street, taking a fearful pounding, yet keeping him from running away until help came, and then fainting. Yet that same boy was afraid of his own shadow up to the time he became a scout.”
“I never heard theh like o’ thet, son,” declared the deeply interested guide.
“’Pears like they hain’t nawthin’ a scout ain’t ekal tuh.”
“Nothing that’s worth while, and that’s the truth,” Thad told him. “They can win merit badges by excelling in certain lines. If you look around right now, you’ll perceive that every boy in this Silver Fox Patrol of Cranford Troop wears at least one medal or badge. And let me tell you, sir, a scout is as proud of his badge as anybody could be.”
“Wall, wall, but sure this heah is int’restin’ tuh me,” the hunter assured his new friends. “And I’m right glad I run across you-all like I done. Never wud a believed they was so much as was good in this heah Boy Scout movement. Allers reckoned as how it mout be summat o’ a lark, er else jest agittin’ recruits fo’ the sojer job. Tell me a heap mo’, son. I kin listen tuh yuh talk fo’ hours.”