Say, it surprised the folks living around there. Before we were half through, they came running out of their houses to see what was going on. It made us feel proud and we were just going to do it over again, when we heard Bill cawing in the house and Mrs. Wilson threw the door open and stood there laughing. "I judge by the sound," said she, "that the Ravens have arrived and are in good voice." We found Bill sitting in a big chair, with his foot propped up and his eyes shining. At first we didn't know just how to act, until in a few minutes Mr. Norton came and then Mrs. Wilson brought in some ice cream and some clusters of strawberries, with dishes of powdered sugar to dip them into. We knew how to act then, all right, and for a few minutes we were too busy to talk. I am not going to tell what all the Scouts did on that hike. I already have told what happened to some of us. There didn't much happen to most of them, anyhow, any more than there did to me. It was different with Skinny. Something almost always happened to him. CHAPTER X A MAIDEN IN DISTRESS "FELLERS," Skinny had told us, when we were getting ready to start on the hike, "you always ought to carry a rope. Something happens every time when you don't have a rope along." "It happens when you do," Benny said. "Anyhow, a rope is too much bother. A blanket and a frying pan and things like that are all I want to carry." "A rope is the thing, just the same. Didn't I lasso the robber last summer out on Illinois River, at Starved Rock? How could I lasso anything without a rope? And didn't we let you down into Horseshoe Canyon with a rope and pull Alice What's-her-name up again?" "Bet your life we did," Bill put in. "You need a rope when you are camping out or are in a boat on the river, but what good is it in walking seven miles?" "Maybe it is and maybe it isn't; but, just the same, you'll be sorry if you don't take one along." He was right, too, for Bill told us afterward that he would have given a good deal for a rope when he was sitting on top of Greylock. He didn't need it for anything, only, he said, it would have been sort of company for him. Skinny was bound to carry a rope. When he marched down Center Street with it coiled around his shoulders, over his blanket, and with his tomahawk in his belt, people ran out of the stores to look at him. The road that he took is uphill a good part of the way. It goes up through the foothills of the east mountain and isn't easy walking. We slide down that road sometimes in winter. When the coasting is good we can slide nearly a mile, clear into the village; then hitch on to a bob and ride back again for another.