"Well! you needn't 'fling' at us, Toiney," laughed Nixon, stepping forward with a bold front. "Hullo! Harold!" he added in what he meant to be a most winning tone. "Hullo, Harold! How are _you_?" supplemented Marcoo in accents equally sugared. But the abnormally timid boy, with the pointed chin and slightly rodent-like face, only made an indistinguishable sound in his throat and slunk behind some bushes on the edge of the corn-patch. Toiney, on the other hand, was never backward in responding vivaciously to a friendly greeting. "Houp-e-là!" he explained in bantering astonishment as he surveyed the two scouts in the uniform which was strange to him. "_Houp-e-là!_ We arre de boy! We arre de stuff, I guess, engh?" He pointed an earthy forefinger at the figures in khaki, his black eyes sparkling with whimsical flattery. "But, _comment_, you'll no come for go in gran' forêt agen, dat's de tam' you'll get los' agen--hein?" "No, we're not going any farther into the woods to-day. We came to see _him_." Nixon nodded in the direction of Harold skulking timidly behind the berry bushes. "We want to speak to him about something." "Ah--miséricorde--he'll no speak on you; he's a _poltron_, a scaree: some tam' I'll be so shame for heem I'll feel lak' cry!" returned Toiney, moved to voluble frankness, his eye glistening like a moist bead, now, with mortified pity. "Son gran'père--hees gran'fader--he's go on town dis day: he's try ver' hard for get heem to go also--for to see! Mais, _non_! He's too scaree!" And the speaker, glancing toward the screen of bushes, shrugged his shoulders despairingly, as if asking what could possibly be done for such a craven. Scout Nixon was not baffled. Persistent by nature, he had worked well into the fibre of his being the tenth point of the scout law: that defeat, or the semblance thereof, must not down the true scout. "Then I'll talk to you first, Toiney," he said, "and tell you about something that we think might help him." And in the simplest English that he could choose, eked out at intervals with freshman French, he made clear to Toiney's quick understanding the aim and methods of the Boy Scout Movement. The Canadian, a born son of the woods, was quick to grasp and commend the return to Nature. "_Ça c'est b'en!_" he murmured with an approving nod. "I'll t'ink dat iss good for boy to go in gran' forêt--w'en he know how fin' de way--for see heem beeg tree en de littal wil' an-ni-mal, engh? Mais, miséri-corde,"--his shrugging shoulders pumped up a huge sigh as he turned toward Harold,--"mis-éri-corde! _he'll_ no marche as _éclaireur_--w'at-you-call-eet--scoutee--hein? He'll no go on meetin' or on school, engh?" And Toiney set to work cutting down cornstalks again as if the subject were unhappily disposed of.