The tall Sugarloaf gleamed in the distance now like a snowy lighthouse whose lamps are sleeping, presiding over the mouth of the tidal river; its brother sand-hills capped by vegetation might have been the pure bright cliffs of some fairy shore.
The boy scout stood for many minutes upon the uplands, gazing afar, his mouth open as if he were physically drinking in that distant beauty.
“Gee whiz! this is gr-reat; isn’t it, Blinkie?” he murmured to the squatting dog by his side. “I never before saw that old Sugarloaf look as it does to-day; did you, Mr. Dog?”
It had appeared just as radiantly beautiful, off and on, during all the seasons of Leon’s life. But his powers of observation had not been trained as was the case of late. In the years prior to his becoming a scout, when his inseparable companion on uplands and marsh had been a shotgun—from the time he was permitted free use of one—and the all-absorbing idea in his mind how to contrive a successful shot at shore bird or animal, he had gone about “lak wit’ eye shut,” so far as many things just now beginning to fill him with a wonderful, speechless gladness were concerned.
“Well, we’re not heading for that farmhouse, are we, pup?” he said at length, turning from the contemplation of runaway creeks and radiant dunes to the completion of his father’s errand.
But the sunlit beauty at which he had been gazing coursed through his every vein, finding vent in a curly, ecstatic whistle that ascended in spirals until it touched the high keynote of exultation and there hung suspended; while the rest of the trip to that upland farmhouse was accomplished in a series of broad jumps, the terrier being as wild with delight as his master.
The errand performed and the boy scout having put in half an hour condescendingly amusing the farmer’s two small children, while Blink exchanged compliments with his kind, master and dog started upon the return walk.
“Oh! it’s early yet; don’t you want to come a little way into the woods, doggie?” said Leon, doubling backward after they had taken a few steps. “We haven’t had many runs together lately. Your nose has been out of joint; poor pup!” stooping to caress the terrier. “Toiney says we can’t take you on our scout hikes, because you’d scare every ‘littal wil’ an-ni-mal’ within a mile. You would, too; wouldn’t you? But there’s an outdoor scout meeting to-night to be held over in Sparrow Hollow, each fellow lighting his own camp-fire—using not more than two matches—and cooking his own supper. And you may come. Yes, I said you might come!” as the dog, gyrating like a feather, seized his coat-sleeve between strong white teeth in his eagerness not to be excluded from any more fun that might be afoot.
They were soon on the sere skirts of the woodland, prancing through leafy drifts.
“We can’t go far,” said Leon. “We must get back to the town and buy our half-pound of beefsteak that we’re to cook without the use of any ordinary cooking-utensil, and so pass one of the tests for becoming a second-class scout. I’ll divvy up with you, pup! But whew! isn’t this just fine?... The woods in November can put it all over the September woods to my mind.”