Hervey said to him, “Well, you had a wild night. If you had only told me what you were going to do when we were talking over the ’phone I’d have joined in with you. And we’d have found it. It serves you right for staying away from dances. You have to come back with us to tell one of the keepers that I’m not a liar and then I’ll hike as far as Catskill with you if you’re going that way.” “I’m staying at Brookside,” the sharpy said. “Well, come over to Temple Camp anyway and see the fun,” Hervey said. “It’ll do you good.” I saw that Hervey was just in one of those happy-go-lucky, reckless moods, and that now after all he didn’t care so much about anything—unless there was an adventure in it. So I said, “Mr. Wilkins, or whatever your name is, only I guess that isn’t your name, when you had your first scare to-night, that was when you heard the ’phone ring over at camp, you got this fellow in Dutch. You got him called a liar because he said he ’phoned to camp and they never heard of any message. We know all about what you did to-night and nobody’s going to make any trouble for you, because anyway, one thing, you’ve had trouble enough. There’s a man, he’s trustee——” “All you have to do is tell him he’s a liar,” Hervey said. “Then I’ll hike as far as Brookside with you.” “You don’t have to tell him any such thing,” I said “You stick to me and you’ll be O. K.,” Hervey told him. “Didn’t I just save your life?” The poor sharpy didn’t know what to make of it all. He was grateful to Hervey, that’s sure. I guess he saw it wasn’t any use denying anything. I guess he wasn’t scared any more, because Hervey seemed to be making friends with him, sort of. I had to laugh because after all Hervey’s fine plan to bring this fellow back like a prisoner, there he was sort of pals with him. Christopher, but he’s a sketch. The fellow said, “They’ll make a lot of trouble for me over there.” “They make it for me too,” Hervey said; “don’t you care.” “The place was open; I just walked in,” the sharpy said. “There was a sign that said Visitors Welcome. You fellows invited me to drop over.” “You sure dropped over,” I began laughing. “The water is unusually wet to-night. You didn’t take anything over there. They’ll give you a good calling down, that’s all.” “I get one of those every day,” Hervey said. “You mean every minute,” I told him. Then I said, “All you have to do is come over with us, and anyway you can’t help it, because I’m sculling the boat around now, and then all you have to do is admit just what you did so as to prove this friend of mine didn’t lie. You can do that much, can’t you? He saved your life. You can put him right with the crowd over there, can’t you? That’s all you have to do. It’s just a question of whether you’ve got a yellow streak or not.” “And we’ll have a lot of fun doing it too,” said Hervey. CHAPTER XXXIII HERVEY’S SERENADE