But Morris was not the man to leave a thing half done. He covered those four beds conscientiously, and rose with a groan only when he was sure that the beloved watch must be hiding elsewhere.
“Seems queer where it could have gotten to,” he mused. “It ticks pretty loud, and I could have heard it if it had been there. The only other place it could be is in the sand pile. You fellows be careful how you shovel in that pile.”
He returned to his job of sifting dirt over the bed, but kept an eye on the sand pile and shouted wrathful warnings every time anyone went near it. Of course they all took occasion to go there as much as possible and jabbed the shovel around recklessly.
Price was working with Morris. One of them brought the dirt from the pile while the other sifted it onto the beds. They shifted frequently, for the sifting work was very tiresome. Price watched his opportunity, slipped the watch into a shovelful of sand and dumped it carefully into the screen. Everyone stood at attention. Two or three shakes of the screen and the silver twinkled through the sand.
Morris’s face beamed at the sight of it. Amidst profound silence he examined the watch minutely. “Not a scratch on it,” he announced innocently. “I don’t see how it escaped, the way you fellows have been jabbing around that sand pile. I remember feeling it drop now, but I did not realize what it was at the time.”
For a moment it looked as though there would be a general outburst, but the fellows all changed their minds and decided to keep it for the next year’s banquet.
That joke livened up the crowd and before the effects of it had worn off Professor Roberts arrived to take up the work of forest mensuration. The boys welcomed the change because it took them into the woods on all day expeditions. They packed their lunches, slung them on the back of their belts, and felt that they were good for all day no matter where they were called upon to go. Sometimes they traveled all day on foot, more often they took the scow to some distant point on the lake before striking into the woods, but no matter how they started they were always certain of new adventures.
One day as they were returning pretty tired from section 36 a fox terrier that had joined the camp as a volunteer was poking busily around all the bunches of brush looking for excitement. Scott watched him in disgust as he ducked into one clump after another with undiminished energy and rose frantically on his hind legs in his vain efforts to follow some little chickadee into a neighboring tree.
“That dog makes me sick,” Scott remarked to Price in deep disgust. “He’s been trying to fly all day and he hasn’t been three feet off the ground yet.”
“Couldn’t do much better yourself,” Bill answered drily.