“Ah—miséricorde—he’ll no speak on you; he’s a poltron, a scaree: some tam’ I’ll be so shame for heem I’ll feel lak’ cry!” returned Toiney, moved to voluble frankness, his eye glistening like a moist bead, now, with mortified pity. “Son gran’père—hees gran’fader—he’s go on town dis day: he’s try ver’ hard for get heem to go also—for to see! Mais, non! He’s too scaree!” And the speaker, glancing toward the screen of bushes, shrugged his shoulders despairingly, as if asking what could possibly be done for such a craven.
Scout Nixon was not baffled. Persistent by nature, he had worked well into the fibre of his being the tenth point of the scout law: that defeat, or the semblance thereof, must not down the true scout.
“Then I’ll talk to you first, Toiney,” he said, “and tell you about something that we think might help him.”
And in the simplest English that he could choose, eked out at intervals with freshman French, he made clear to Toiney’s quick understanding the aim and methods of the Boy Scout Movement.
The Canadian, a born son of the woods, was quick to grasp and commend the return to Nature.
“Ça c’est b’en!” he murmured with an approving nod. “I’ll t’ink dat iss good for boy to go in gran’ forêt—w’en he know how fin’ de way—for see heem beeg tree en de littal wil’ an-ni-mal, engh? Mais, miséri-corde,”—his shrugging shoulders pumped up a huge sigh as he turned toward Harold,—”mis-éri-corde! he’ll no marche as éclaireur—w’at-you-call-eet—scoutee—hein? He’ll no go on meetin’ or on school, engh?”
And Toiney set to work cutting down cornstalks again as if the subject were unhappily disposed of.
Such was not the case, however. At one word which he, the blue-shirted woodsman, had used in his harangue, Nixon started, and a strange look shot across his face. He knew enough of French to translate literally that word éclaireur, the French military term for scout. He knew that it meant figuratively a light-spreader: one who marches ahead of his comrades to enlighten the others.
Could any term be more applicable to the peace scout of to-day who is striving to bring in an advanced era of progress and good will?
Somehow, it stimulated in Scout Warren the desire to be an éclaireur in earnest to the darkened boy overshadowed by his bugbear fears, now skulking behind the berry-bushes.