Still they tried to dye hope a fresh rose-color at this forest paintpot
too: to silence with whooping yells and fantastic capers, and in
flitting war-dances in and out among the trees, the grim raving of that
word in their ears.
They painted Blink likewise in zebra-like stripes across his back,
whereupon he promptly rolled on the ground, blurring his markings,
until he was a mottled and grotesque red-and-white object.
"He looks like a clown's dog," said Coombsie. "If any one should meet us
in the woods, they'd think we were a troop of painted guys escaped from
a circus! We'll create a sensation in the town when we get home--if we
ever do?" _sotto voce_. "Hadn't we better stop 'training on' now, and
try to get somewhere?"
So, controlling the training-on, capering savage now rampant in each one
corresponding to his painted face, they toiled on again, while the
afternoon shadows lengthened in the woods--until they stood transfixed,
their war-whoops silenced, before another surprise of the woods on which
they had tumbled, unprepared.
It was a lengthy gray cairn of stones with a rude wooden marker at the
top bearing the date 1790, and at the foot a modern granite slab
inscribed with the words: "Bishop's Grave," and the date of the stone's
erection.
"_Bishop's Grave!_" Coombsie ejaculated, while the empty basket drooped
heavily from his hand as if "the grasshopper had suddenly become a
burden." "I've heard of the grave, but I've never seen it before. Bishop
was lost in these woods about a hundred and twenty-one years ago; he
couldn't find his way out and wandered round till he died. His body was
discovered months afterwards and they buried it here."
Awe fell upon the four boys. Their faces were drawn under the smearing
of paint. Their eyes gleamed strangely, like sunken islands, from out
their ruddy setting. The mottled terrier, with that sympathetic
perception which dogs have of their masters' moods, pointed one ear
sharply and drooped the other, like a flag at half-mast, while he stared
at the rude cairn.
The scout impulsively lifted his broad-brimmed hat as he was in the
habit of doing if, when marching with his troop, he encountered a
funeral.
In the mind of each lad tolled like a slow bell the menacing echo of
Toiney's words: "You walkee--walkee--en you haf so tire' en so lonesam
you _go deaded_!"
CHAPTER V
"YOU MUST LOOK OUT!"
The four boys did not linger long before that lonely grave; the fears it
evoked were too unpleasant. They pushed on again through the woods, each
one clearing his throat of a husky tickling that was third cousin to a
weary sob.
The scout was inwardly combating the depressing memory of Toiney Leduc's
warning with the advice of the Chief Scout that if he should ever find
himself lost in the woods, Fear, not hunger or cold, would prove his
worst enemy.
"I mustn't lose my grip! I must keep my head--not be fogged by fear! I'm
a boy scout of America," he reminded himself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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