"Jus' so! But that brand o' teasing is ruled out under the scout law. A scout is a brother to every other scout. I guess the idea of trying to get Harold enlisted in the Boy Scouts and thereby waking him up a little an' gradually showing him what 'bugaboos' his fears are, originated with that lad from Philadelphia, Nix Warren, who, as I understand, showed himself to be quite a fellow in the woods, starting a friction fire with rubbing-sticks an' doing other stunts which caused his companions to become head over heels interested in this new movement." "But how did _he_ get interested in Harold Greer?" inquired the doctor. "Well, as they trudged through the woods on that day when they made circus guys of themselves at Varney's Paintpot, and subsequently got lost, they passed the Greer farm and saw Harold who hid behind that French-Canadian, Toiney, when he saw them coming. Apparently it struck Nix, seeing him for the first time, what a miserable thing it must be for the boy himself to be afraid of everything an' nothing. So he set his heart on enlisting Harold in the new patrol. He, Nix, wants to pass the test for becoming a first-class scout: to do this he must enlist a recruit trained by himself in the requirements of a tenderfoot; and he is going to try an' get near to Harold an' train him--Nixon's cousin, Mark Coombs, Marcoo, as they call him, told me all about it." "Well, I like that!" The doctor's face glowed. "Though I'm afraid they'll have difficulty in getting the eighth Owl sufficiently fledged to show any plumage but the white feather!" with a sorry smile. "I pity that boy Harold," went on the medical man, "because he has been hampered by heredity and in a way by environment too. His mother was a very delicate, nervous creature, Andy. She was a prey to certain fears, the worst of which was one which we doctors call 'cloister fobia,' which means that she had a strange dread of a crowd, or even of mingling with a small group of individuals. As you know, her husband, like Dave Baldwin's father, was a Gloucester fisherman, whose home was in these parts. During his long absences at sea, she lived alone with her father-in-law, her little boy Harold and one old woman in that little farmhouse on the clearing. And I suppose every time that the wind howled through the woods she had a fresh fit of the quakes, thinking of her husband away on the foggy fishing-grounds." "Yes! I guess at such times the women suffer more than we do," muttered Captain Andy, thinking of his dead wife.