Well, as long as his obligation lay along the line of homely, kindly deeds—the keeping of promises, the doing of good turns—he would renounce all thoughts of spectacular exploits. He resented the shrewd maneuver of Providence in giving him an extra reason for keeping his word. “I intended to keep it anyway,” he said. He became very stubborn in his resolution now. Nothing would induce him to break his promise, he would keep it to the day, just as an honest man pays a note on the day. And he would not let his bad luck bully him into going around saying that he had “heart trouble.” He would not “play off sick” at this late date. That was Wilfred Cowell all over.
“Anyway, there’s one thing I don’t want any longer,” he said to himself. “One just like it brought my mother bad luck. My brother was kidnapped and my father died and we lost our money. I don’t want this blamed pin any more—as long as I can’t swim or do anything. I believe in bad luck, I don’t care what fellows say. It brought me bad luck ever since I was here, that’s sure. I believe what people say—that they’re unlucky.”
Sullenly he pulled the opal scarf pin from his tie and was about to cast it from him into the thick undergrowth. “The only luck I’ve had,” he said with cynical despair in his voice, “is Al Berry going away; anyway he won’t be here to know I flopped again—that’s one good thing anyway.”
His hand was even raised to cast away the little testimonial of his heroism when suddenly he noticed a strange thing. At first he thought it was not his own scarf pin that he held, so changed was the opal in color. Instead of showing its varying, elusive glints of beauty, it was opaque and of a dull and cheerless blue, like Wilfred’s own mood. Yet sometimes this same uncanny stone had flamed with glory. And it would flame with glory again, all in good time, for in its mysterious depths the wondrous opal heralds good or evil, sorrow or joy, and when it dazzles with its myriad flickering lights, you may be sure that health and good luck are on the way, and that all is well.
Wilfred was so astonished at its loss of color that he replaced it in his scarf. Then he started with a kind of forced resolve for the Elks’ patrol cabin.
CHAPTER XXIV
STRIKE TWO
Connie Bennett and Charlie O’Conner were busy setting a long stick upright from the cabin roof as Wilfred approached.
“No time like the present, hey?” said Connie. “If we don’t need an aerial we can fly our pennant from it.”
“What do you mean if we don’t need an aerial?” Charlie asked. “How do you get that way?”
“He’s like Pee-wee Harris,” said Connie; “he’s absolutely, positively, definitely sure.”