Emerson had never done much climbing and it was fortunate that his essay at this manly sport was made in private. He looked queer and frog-like, scrambling up the plank. He made little progress until he discovered the important part played by the knees in such an undertaking. Then he was able to ascend slowly, laboriously. The scouts would have said he looked funny climbing; fortunately, he could not see himself as others would have seen him.

At the upper end of the plank his experimenting to get away from it would have been ludicrous if the occasion had not been serious. He was within four feet of the top of the wall, yet he could not disconnect himself from his slanting support and get a hold anywhere else.

At last, by a hazardous gymnastic effort, he managed to get an uncertain hold on a rock doubtfully embedded in the crumbling plaster on top of the wall. He then ventured to rest one foot on the ragged end of the plank and succeeded in lifting himself to a standing posture. He felt a certain sense of elation along with his tremulousness. There is a kind of fascination in the knowledge that safety, even life, hangs by a thread. Emerson stood upon his uncertain foothold, reaching above him and clutching the rock on the wall. What to do next, he could not imagine. He could not regain the safety of the plank. Neither could he pull himself up onto the wall.

CHAPTER XXVIII
NOT A SCOUT

What he did, he did in a kind of impulse of reckless endeavor. He knew that if he went down, he would not this time fall in the mud, but on the pile of rocky debris. Clasping the rock above with both hands, he succeeded in getting one leg upon the wall, then the other. For just two or three seconds, his peril was frightful, until he got his whole weight upon the wall. Then he was lying safely on top of it.

At this spot there was a sheer descent upon the outside. He might have risked a jump, for the depth was not so great as within. But he was chafed and sore from his frantic effort and lame from his earlier fall. So he limped around to the point where the remains of the stone steps were and descended there. If it had not been for the unconscious child within, he would have experienced the exhilaration of Monte Cristo at being out in the world once more.

But what should he do now? The nearest house, he knew, was a mile off, and it would take him long to limp that distance. Moreover, he was now conscious of a certain personal quality which he had always exhibited in an insignificant way.

This was his self-reliance, destined to be the making of him. As long as Emerson could remember, he had been the butt of ridicule by boys. Sometimes, he had been the victim of rough usage. But he had never told of this at home nor committed the unpardonable sin of making an ally of his older brother; “big-brother stuff” he had eschewed. He had begun when very young going into the city alone, and attending select matinees, lectures and exhibitions. Very early, he had begun carrying his wallet with the means to finance these trips. Once, when a mere child, he had been lost, and he had gone and told a policeman.

These things, and things like them, had won him only ridicule at the hands of boys. And his queer, adult phraseology had aroused unholy mirth. It would hardly do to say that a boy should not be too refined, yet extreme refinement in a boy is apt to tell to his disadvantage. At all events, it had been so with Emerson.

But the spirit of self-reliance, if it exists, will manifest itself in large ways as well as in small ways, given only the occasion. And Emerson Skybrow, baffled, lame, distraught, would not go to the nearest house and put his business into some one else’s hands. He had not stumbled upon little Margie Garrison, he had gone seeking her. Well, he would see this thing through or know the reason why. That was his own phrase, “or know the reason why.” They had often laughed at him when he said he would do this or that or know the reason why. Scouts are so fond of laughing that sometimes they laugh too soon....