Another celebration marked the setting of the ridge-pole; and when the roof was laid, it seemed as if the end was actually in sight. In the meantime, the important detail of earning money to pay for necessary materials had not been lost sight of. It had been decided that the scouts should go about this either singly or in groups, as they preferred. A number of suggestions were made by Mr. Curtis, but it was impressed upon the troop that there must be no appeal for either work or money in any way that would in the least savor of begging. Whatever they did must be real work, the sort that people wanted done whether or not a scout cabin was in process of erection; and they must always give value received.
The methods resorted to seemed endless. Three boys who were adept with saw, hammer, and plane undertook the building of bird-houses, and their products were so well made and attractive that they had a hard time filling orders. Others raked up lawns, tended furnaces, cleaned cellars, sawed wood, and did a score of other varied chores. One entire patrol took up the subscription proposition of a big publishing-house and devoted themselves to it with such ardor that they cleared up nearly as much as all the rest together.
It can safely be said that few members of the troop had many spare minutes in the month that followed the starting of the cabin. There was no time for sports or games or reading stories. The public library was deserted. Of course there were a few who tired of the constant pressure and managed to escape a Saturday’s labor by some flimsy pretext, but, on the whole, they stuck to it with remarkable perseverance. And when the last stone was in place on the chimney-top, the last chink filled, the last nail driven, there wasn’t a boy in all that twenty-five who didn’t feel a thrill of proud achievement at the result of their united efforts.
CHAPTER XII
A CRY IN THE NIGHT
Very seldom does reality come up to expectation, but this was one of the rare exceptions. It was the very cabin of their dreams that rose, a concrete fact, before their admiring gaze. As they stood off surveying the walls of neatly fitting logs, the sloping roof where a covering of split saplings concealed the useful, waterproof tar-paper, the square, workmanlike chimney rising beyond, there was a moment of almost awed silence, broken presently by Court Parker.
“Some cabin!” he exclaimed, voicing the feeling of them all. “It doesn’t seem as if we could have built that ourselves, fellows.”
“We did, though–we and Mr. Curtis and Mr. Grimstone!” jubilated Ted MacIlvaine. “Gee! Think of its being finished, and think of its being ours! Come on inside.”
They went with a rush and broke into eager loud-voiced admiration of their handiwork. They tried the bunks, stout frameworks of pine with lengths of heavy canvas stretched tightly over them, and pronounced them better than any mattress, clamorously upheld the merit of one piece of work over another, and discussed the need of a table, chairs, and various other conveniences. Of course a fire was started, and when the red blaze roared up the chimney they rejoiced at the perfection of the draught. Then began a strenuous altercation as to what the cabin should be called which bade fair to end in a deadlock, owing to the wide variety of suggestions.
Neither the scoutmaster nor Mr. Grimstone took part in this. The former believed in letting the boys settle such questions unaided, while the old man so unaffectedly enjoyed the boys’ delight that he simply sat in the background, silent, but with twinkling eyes. When a lull came in the dispute, however, he bethought himself of something.
“There’s a pair of elk horns down to the barn you boys may as well have,” he remarked. “You can hang ’em up over the fireplace for an ornament.”