They made their way back to that nut-tree, whose hoary trunk was still swathed with Leon's coat and the scout's Norfolk jacket, knotted round it to prevent the young coon which had signally outwitted them from "lighting down." "Whew! I feel as if 'twas low tide inside me. A scare always makes me hungry," remarked Leon, not at all like a hero, but a very prosaic boy. "I think eating in the woods is the best part of the business!" "I say! You'd make a jolly good scout; do you know it?" put forth Nixon. But the other only hunched his shoulders with the grin of a contortionist as he bit into a ham sandwich, richly flavored with peanut butter and quince jelly from the shaking which the basket had undergone on its passage through the woods. The troop of hungry crows which had pecked unavailingly at the wicker cover, had retired to some distance and watched the picnic in croaking envy. Colin lay out in the sun, being rolled over at intervals by the scout, to dislodge the caking mud from his clothes, and to knead up his "soggy" spirits. "Well! if we had carried out our first intention this morning, Nix, if we had gone down the river to the Sugarloaf Sand-Dunes near its mouth, we might _all_ have stuck high and dry, in the river mud, if the tide forsook us," said Coombsie by and by, as he dispensed a limited amount of cold coffee from a pint bottle. "That's a pleasure in store, whenever we can get Captain Andy to take us in his motor-boat. Say! he's great; he was skipper of a Gloucester fishing schooner until a year ago, when he lost his vessel in a fog; the main-boom fell on him and broke his leg; he's lame still. He stays in Exmouth with his daughter most o' the time now. He was one o' the Gloucester crackerjacks: he saved so many lives at sea that he used to be called the Ocean Patrol!" "Why, he must be a regular sea-scout," Nixon's eye watered; he had the bump of hero-worship strongly developed. "Captain Andy's laying for you, Leon," remarked Coombsie, passing round some jelly-roll. "Oh, I guess I know why!" came the nonchalant answer. "It's for tying a wooden shingle to a long branch of the apple-tree near old Ma'am Baldwin's house, so that it would keep tapping on her door through the night. If the wind is in the right direction it works finely--keeps her guessing all the time! I've lain low among the marsh-grass and seen her come to the door, in the dark, a dozen times, gruntin' like a grizzly! I hate solitary cranks!" "Captain Andy says that she was never peculiar as she is now, until her youngest son ran wild and was sent to a reformatory," suggested Marcoo gravely. "I'd cut out that trick, if I were you!" growled the scout. "Oh! I don't know; there are times when a fellow must paint the town red--or something--or 'he'd bust'! That reminds me, we were going to daub ourselves with red from Varney's Paintpot. If we're to find it to-day, we'd better be moving on pretty soon. It must be after two o'clock now."