The intangible dragon which held their brother boy a captive on this lonely clearing, not permitting him to mingle freely with his fellows for study or play, was weakening before them. "That's right, Harold! Go ahead: now pass the end up through the loop! Bravo, you're the boy! Now, around the standing part--the rope itself--and down again! Good: you have it. You can beat _him_ every time at tying a knot: he's just a blockhead, isn't he?" And Scout Warren pointed with much show of scorn at Marcoo, the normal recruit, who looked on delightedly. Never before did boy rejoice so unselfishly over being beaten at a test as Coombsie then! For right here on the little farm-clearing a strange thing had happened. In the gloom of every beclouded mind there is one chink by which light, more or less, may enter; and a skillful teacher can work an improvement by enlarging that chink. Harold's brain was not darkened in the sense of being defective. And the gray tent of fear in which he dwelt had its chink too; the scouts had found it in the frayed rope-end and knot. For while the timid boy watched Coombsie's bungling fingers, that drab knot, upon which they blundered, suddenly beckoned to him like a star. And, all in a moment, it was no longer his fear-stricken mother who lived in him, but his daring fisherman-father whose horny fingers could tie every sailor's knot that was ever heard of, and who had used that bowline noose in many an emergency at sea to save a ship-wrecked fellow-creature. The bowline was the means of saving the fisherman's son now from mental shipwreck, or something nearly as bad. Harold's eager thoughts became entangled in it, while his fingers worked under Nixon's directions; he forgot, for once, to be afraid. Presently the noose was complete, and Nixon was showing him how to tighten it by pulling on the standing part of the rope. This achieved, the timid human "Hare" raised his brown eyes from the rope in his hand and looked from one to another of his three companions as in a dream, a bright one. For half a minute a rainbowed--almost awed--silence held the three upon the clearing. Toiney was the first to break it. He flung his arms rapturously round the hitherto fear-bound boy. "Bravo! mo' fin," he cried, embracing Harold as his "cute one." "Bravo! mo' smarty. Grace à bon Dieu, you ain' so scare anny longere! You go for be de boy--de brave boy--you go for be de scout--engh?" His eyes were wet and winking as if, now indeed, he felt "lak' cry"! "Certainly, you're going to be a scout, Harold," corroborated Nixon, equally if not so eloquently moved. "Now! don't you want to learn how to tie another knot, the fisherman's bend? You ought to be able to tie that, you know, because your father was a great fisherman."