But this one youthful sea-gull, a mere boy in plumage gray, held his ground, parading the lonely beach with head turning alertly from side to side, as if he were admonishing his wheeling brothers with: "These are boy scouts! Look at me: I tell you, you have nothing to fear!" So bold was his mien, so peaceful the attitude of the human invaders, that presently the regiment of sea-gulls fluttered back to a point of rendezvous only a little removed from their former one. "We won't have much company beyond ourselves and the birds, I guess!" remarked Nixon presently. "There are no houses in sight except those three fine bungalows about quarter of a mile off on the edge of the dunes. And the fisherman's shack on the beach below them!" "Yes, that belongs to an old clam-digger," said Kenjo Red. "He keeps his pails there. Don't you remember my telling you about his letting us--my uncle an' me--have his boat one day last November, so's we could row over to the sand-spit opposite, and take a look at some seals that were sunning themselves there?" "Oh! yes, _we_ remember, Kenjo; you've told about that at half a dozen camp-fire powwows, at least." Starrie Chase plucked off Kenjo's cap and combed his ruddy locks with a teasing forefinger. "They say Dave Baldwin, the _vaurien_," with guttural mimicry of Toiney's accents, "hangs out among the dunes here, when he isn't loafing in the woods up the river," added Corporal Chase, peering off among the white sand-hills, capped with biscuit-colored plumes of dry beach-grass, and the more verdant beach-pea, as if he expected to see young Baldwin's head pop up among them. "I wonder if we'll run across him?" said Nixon. "He can't 'make camp' among the dunes. Nobody is allowed to camp out here, without special permission. Boy scouts are privileged persons; they know we won't set fire to the brush." "Oh! when he needs a fire--when he knocks a woodchuck on the head and wants to cook it--I suppose he rows over to one of those little islands there; they say he has an old rowboat here." Leon pointed to two small islets rising from the plains of water a little higher up the river. "Well, I don't envy him!" Marcoo shrugged his shoulders. "He must have a bitter time of it in winter, when the river is frozen over down to the bay, an' you don't hear a sound here beyond the occasional pop of a sportsman's gun, or the barking of the seals--and even they're pretty quiet in midwinter. Hey! Look at that spotted sandpiper. 'Teeter-tail' we call him: see his tail bob up and down!" exclaimed Coombsie, who was an enthusiast about birds. In watching the sandpiper rise from the white beach and dart across the water, in listening to his sweet, whistling "peet-weet!" note, speculations about the habits of the _vaurien_, the good-for-nothing young vagrant, were forgotten.