If the first of August seemed like Christmas, the days immediately preceding it did not seem like the joyous days before Christmas. Wilfred wandered about, watched birds with his opera-glass, took leisurely walks, and once he hiked into Terryville and called on old Pop Winters. Perhaps he walked a little more vigorously than before; once he permitted himself to run a little to get a hitch on a hay wagon. But he did not join in any strenuous games. That was easy, for no one asked him to. He was ostracized from the vigorous life of camp, an outsider, a lonely figure. But just the same the mountain air had put its mark upon him; he was brown and full of an excess energy. To this day they will tell you at Temple Camp of the storm which blew the shutters off the cooking shack on the night of July thirty-first, that year. A wind-driven rain beat against the tents all night, filling the drain ditches, and driving the occupants into the pavilion and the commissary shack. You could hear the boats banging against each other at the landing all night. The big swimming contest had been won by a scout in the Fox patrol from Ohio and the aerial which they had proudly erected outside their tent to bring the wandering voices of the night to their prize receiving set, was wrecked utterly. In dismantling the camp of its gala decorations, the boisterous elements had saved the scouts this task. The gay bunting was torn from pavilion and boathouse and plastered here and there, or carried away altogether.
Such was the end of all that gala splendor in which the Mary Temple contest had been celebrated. Of all the artistic drapery of flags and streamers only a few drenched and plastered shreds remained, their colors running, their loose ends flapping in the gale. Such was the scene which greeted Wilfred Cowell on August first, a day destined to be memorable in the annals of Temple Camp. There was a certain fitness in his rising early that morning and sallying forth amid the drenched litter, for he had wrecked the hopes of his patrol, even as the storm had wrecked these festive memorials of the big event. And he was running amuck, even as the furious demon of the storm was.
It was not yet breakfast time when he was to be seen trudging through the rain past the cooking shack and through Tent Lane, as they called it. He wore his overcoat with collar turned up. Several scouts who were contemplating the weather from the shelter of Administration Shack noticed him and one observed that Wandering Willie was out for a stroll. The quarters in Tent Lane consisted of a row of tents pitched on a long platform under the shelter of a long shed. At the seventh tent, Wilfred paused. Within were the sounds of belated rising and hurried dressing. He stooped and knocked on the platform and there followed a quick silence within.
“Is Edgar Coleman in there?” he asked. And without waiting for the obvious answer he added, “He’s wanted out here.”
Edgar Coleman, never prepossessing, looked anything but natty as he emerged from the tent, his hair as yet unbrushed, the evidences of recent slumber still upon him. Those of his comrades who were sufficiently interested crowded in the open............