"Now, just you hold your horses there!" declared the party in question, trying to repress a groan, as he had a rude twinge of pain shoot up his left leg. "I owe all this to myself, and more, because I made the mistake of running off without finding out what that groan meant. I've wanted to kick myself ever since. It ain't often I play the part of a sneak, and it makes me sore. So whenever my leg hurts I just grin and say to myself: 'Serves you right, you coward, for running away, instead of investigating, like a true scout should have done!'"
"You are too severe on yourself, Oscar," remarked Mr. Garrabrant, soothingly; for he knew the impulsive and warm-hearted nature of the boy who was taking himself so much to task. "When your companion suggested that perhaps there was a case of smallpox in that hut, it was your duty to come to me and report, rather than take the awful responsibility on your young shoulders. And I mean to see to it that you get many good marks for what you have done this night—not you alone, but every boy who accompanied me on this errand of mercy."
"There's the camp fire, sir!" exclaimed Elmer, at this moment.
"I bet you Redth glad to see it, poor old chap!" remarked Dr. Ted.
"Shucks! I reckon I could have stood it a little while longer!" declared the limping one; but when he presently reached the home camp, and sank down on a blanket, the pain he had been silently enduring all the return trip was too much for him, and Red actually fainted.
Of course he was quickly brought to, and Dr. Ted looked to the injured limb.
"You'll have to lie around pretty much all the balance of the time we're run up in thith neck of the woodth, old fellow," was his announcement; which dictum made Red do what the pain had failed to accomplish, groan dismally.
Of course those who had been left behind were fairly clamorous to know what had happened. So sitting there by the crackling fire, with all those bright and eager faces surrounding him, the scout master, assisted at times by Elmer, Ted or Lil Artha, described their long jaunt over the grim mountainside, the finding of the lone cabin, just as Red and Larry had said, and what wonderful discovery they had made upon peering in through the open window.
And every boy felt that a golden opportunity had come to their organization that night to live up to the high ideals the Boy Scout movement stands for.