Wyne paused in the dark attic for a few moments, listening to the torrential downpour on the shingles and looking out of the window which was streaming with rain. He wondered where indeed Hervey Willetts could be so late at night. Why did his thoughts dwell on Hervey Willetts? There were fine, brave scouts in his own troop. He went downstairs to his own room, stirred by the heroic fury of the maddened elements and, as he entered, a deafening peal of thunder smote his ears. It seemed to shake the house in its tumultuous frenzy. That was the climax of the storm. It was odd how two things strangely related to each other occurred immediately upon the waning of that spasmodic storm. And how each of those things was characteristic of the boy concerned in it. At about the same time that Wyne Corson propped himself comfortably up in bed for a leisurely perusal of the beautifully illustrated Temple Camp booklet, Hervey Willetts scrambled up a broken rafter of the old barn roof which had been struck by lightning and had fallen into his dank and streaming dungeon. Oh, he was lucky! Just as he always said he was, _he was lucky_. But he did not know of his greatest luck. He did not know that a boy down in South Farrelton was sitting propped up in bed looking at the pictures of lake and cabin and reading about the rules and awards and all the pleasurable routine of a great scout community in the sequestered woodland of the Catskills. Wet, hungry and exhausted, with a stern military school staring him in the face, Hervey Willetts was luckier than he knew. Reading, looking at books even, was something that he never did. He had never even seen that familiar booklet about Temple Camp! Yet that little booklet was destined to influence his future. It is funny, when you come to think of it, how that pretty, tasseled prospectus was to deal this doer of mighty deeds a knockout blow. He had blithely disregarded every by-law and rule that it contained. He had repudiated it in toto. And now, out of its own prosy printed matter, it was to strike him back with a fine retaliatory swat. CHAPTER XXXIV SUMMER PLANS Mr. Talbot had spoken correctly; Hervey went to Chestnut Hill Military Academy. Also Hervey had spoken correctly; he escaped. He was sent back and remained till the Christmas holidays. It is not pleasant watching a caged squirrel and we shall not follow his troubled career when he marched in line and saluted and went “in formation” to Chestnut Hill village twice a week, once to church and once to the movies.