"I'd get rid of all the stars, stationary stars, movie stars and all," Roy said. "Scouts are supposed to like the stars," Pee-wee informed Blythe. "Sure, if he had his own way he'd eat hunter's stew out of the Big Dipper," said Roy. "A lot he knows about the stars; he doesn't even know that Mercury is named after a thermometer." "This bunch is crazy," Pee-wee informed Blythe. "That's because we sleep under crazy quilts," Roy said. Blythe just sat there laughing, the silent, diffident pleasure in his countenance shown by the crackling, cheery blaze. "What would you do if you didn't have the North Star, I'd like to know?" Pee-wee demanded. "We'd be all roaming around lost in the woods, dead maybe." "I should worry about roaming around dead," said Roy. "Do you think I've got the North Star?" With a look of pitying contempt, Pee-wee turned from Roy to the more congenial bowl, now sizzling and bubbling on the fire. "It's ready," he said. "Be prepared," said Roy; "each one arm himself with a tin plate and after that every scout for himself. This is called a hunter's stew because you have to hunt for the meat in it, but it's got plenty of e-pluribus unions in it. The potatoes and dumplings go to the patrol leaders, carrots to first and second hand scouts; tenderfeet get nothing because the stew isn't tender enough...." It was pleasant sitting there in the bright area surrounded by darkness, chatting and planning the work for the morrow, and eating hunter's stew, scout style, patent applied for. And notwithstanding the slurs which Roy had cast at the sky it was pleasant to see that vast bespangled blackness over head. In the solemn night the neighboring shacks were divested of their tawdry cheapness, the loose and flapping strips of tar-paper and the broken windows were not visible, and the buildings seemed clothed in a kind of sombre dignity--silent memorials of the boys who had made those old boards and rafters ring with their shouts and laughter. Not a sound was there now from all those barnlike remains of a life that was gone. Only the noise of the saw and the hammer would resound where once the stirring revelry echoed. "You hear some funny sounds here at night, when the wind blows," Blythe remarked. "Shh, listen; I hear something now," one of the scouts said. "I heard that last night," said Blythe uneasily; "or else I dreamed it." Westy, who had been poking up the fire, paused, his stick poised, listening. "It's over there," he said, pointing to the tall dark outline of the windmill. "There isn't breeze enough to turn the fan," Doc Carson said. "It sounds like someone groaning," said another. From the neighborhood of that old tower, though perhaps farther off, they could not tell, came a sound almost human, a kind of moaning intermingled with a plaintive wail, pitched in a higher key. "Spooky," Westy said. "This is the kind of a place I like," said Connie. "Only it's nice to have somebody here," Blythe admitted.