By degrees Bobolink managed to get rid of his sore feeling, which may have come, after all,
from an unaccustomed bed on the floor. Despite the blankets which he had tucked under him, at some time during the night he possibly rolled out of his snug nest, and the hard boards left an impression.
In a short time the gymnasium was made to look orderly. Paul did not wish those kind friends who had been so good to the scouts to find any reason for regretting their courtesy and benevolence.
Then, after all were out, he locked the door, before making for his own home, in order to finish his preparations, and secure a good breakfast.
Already Stanhope was all astir. Boys who usually slept until the call for breakfast disturbed their happy dreams, were up and doing. Indeed, many of them had, if the truth were known, stolen out of bed at various times before dawn, anxious not to oversleep. For this was to be one of the greatest days the younger generation of Stanhope had ever known.
The long roll of Bluff Shipley's drum could be heard at intervals, and how their pulses thrilled at the sound, knowing that it was meant for them alone! Not since away back in '61, when little Stanhope, then a village, mustered a company to send to the front to serve their country, had such intense excitement abounded.
Who could sleep when in some score of homes the hope of the household was rushing up and down stairs, gathering his possessions, buckling on his knapsack half a dozen times, and showing all the symptoms of a soldier going to the wars?
Every girl in town was on the street, many of them to wave farewell to brother or friend. And besides, there were the envious ones connected with the "Outcast Troop," as Ted and Ward called their fragment, because they had been unable to obtain a charter from the National Council, being backward in many of the requirements insisted on.
These fellows had been delayed in making their start, and were planning to slip out of town some time later in the day. They possibly wanted to make sure that the scouts were actually headed in the direction of Rattlesnake Mountain; for not a few among them secretly doubted whether Paul and his comrades would have the nerve to venture into that wild country.