The scouts continued to carry out their useful plan of campaign while the great Fair lasted. They won golden opinions from visitors and townspeople for the unfailing courtesy with which they performed their various labors.
Arthur Cameron had a rather difficult surgical undertaking which he managed with such astonishing skill as to win a mention of his work in the next issue of a certain well-known medical journal. This came about through the local Red Cross doctor having sent in a highly complimentary mention of the emergency hospital on the Fair grounds, and the clever manner in which the scouts carried out their work of “first aid to the injured.”
There was not a dissenting opinion in all Oakvale when a vote of thanks was sent in at the next meeting of the scouts and which covered their activities during Fair week. Indeed, many persons were ready to declare that the splendid way in which Hugh and his uniformed followers had carried out their difficult duties made them proud to say they lived in Oakvale.
All of this was very pleasant for the boys. They had had to fight down strong opposition when the troop was first started, and there had been numerous skeptics from time to time who would not see things in their true light; but as Billy Worth was fond of saying, “if you searched Oakvale with a fine-tooth comb nowadays, you’d find it hard to discover a single kicker, or one who didn’t believe the scout movement had been the greatest uplifting influence that had ever struck the town.”
[...] chanced to have had a part in the happening he invariably spoke of it as “we did this.” Then in the midst of his story came the appearance of Peter, the bound boy, with his thrilling tale concerning the little charges whom he had had to temporarily abandon while he went in search of assistance. After that there followed the finding of the youngsters, the triumphant return to the farm-house, the coming of Mr. Barger, and finally, most astonishing of all, the discovery that the black-faced man they had supposed was the hired help should prove to be Addison Prentice’s father.
As all the scouts knew about the decided opposition shown by the quarry-owner toward their organization, when they learned of his wonderful conversion a series of hearty cheers made the slumbering echoes in the woods awaken.
“That ought to make it unanimous for the scouts in and around Oakvale,” asserted Alec, boisterously. “I can’t seem to remember another person of consequence willing to say a single word against the troop. We’ll have every patrol filled to the limit before a month [rolls by.”]
[... Cale had feared] that it would be his fate to always follow Doc Merritt about from fair to fair, playing the ignoble part of assistant to a fakir.
Now, as though the magic wand of a magician had touched his case, all this was changed. Walter Osborne had a long letter from him a week or so later, in which he told how happy and contented he felt, and that he had already made application for enlistment in a local troop of Boy Scouts.
“It was through the manly principles of the scouts that my salvation came about, you know, Walter,” he wrote, “and I’m bent on practicing them, in hopes that I may be able to repay the heavy debt I owe Hugh Hardin and all the rest of your splendid chums by passing the favor along. Perhaps, who knows, I may run across a boy who needs a friend and adviser, just like I did; and when I do, it’ll make me happier than I can tell you to help him over the rocks.”
Hugh felt a mist come over his eyes when he read all that the boy put in that letter. He realized that, during the week of the County Fair, there had come, to a favored few of the scouts, an opportunity to perform a most charitable act.