What Mr. Richmond had said about bears made him nervous. Every time he saw a stump of a tree, he was sure it was a bear, and every time he came to a part of the woods where the trees stood very close together and it looked dark inside, he had to whistle and sing louder than Mary did when she was afraid of the cow. Whenever he felt real scared he would caw like a crow, and that made him feel almost brave again, for sometimes when you just pretend you are brave and act as if you are, all of a sudden you get brave. I don't know why it is but I have noticed it. He kept a sharp eye out for deer, for he wanted to bring us one, but he didn't see a thing all the way up that looked like a wild animal except a calf, which ran when he threw a stick at it, and the birds, which don't count. It was hot work but the air was fine, and he could see all up and down Hoosac Valley, and that is worth seeing any time. If he had taken a spy-glass with him, perhaps he could have seen the other Scouts on the way to North Adams and Cheshire. Once in a while he came to a mountain brook, gurgling and singing over the stones. Then he would throw himself down to rest and listen to the pouring water, which we boys think is the sweetest music in all the world, unless it is the cawing of a crow away off somewhere, on the mountainside. Late in the afternoon he came to Savoy and stopped in a field to cook himself a good supper. That night he slept in a barn, cuddling down in the haymow, where he could hear some horses stirring in their stalls. They seemed sort of like company for him, although they couldn't talk any. "Were you not afraid up there, all alone?" Mr. Norton asked, when Skinny was telling about the horses. "What, me?" said he. "Anyhow, I wouldn't have been, only there were all kinds of noises in the night and once I heard something scratching at the door. I think it was a bear; maybe, two bears." "Great snakes!" said Bill, and we all thought so, too. But Skinny waved one hand, as if that wasn't anything worth mentioning, and went on. When morning finally came and the sun shone in through a cobwebby window across the haymow he slipped out of the barn on the side away from the house, so that the folks wouldn't see him. Just the same, they saw him cooking his breakfast, and were going to set the dog on him. But when the farmer's wife found out that it was a Boy Scout and not a tramp she told him to come right into the house and eat with them. He went, too, because he could smell the breakfast cooking and it 'most made him crazy. "How about it, Mr. Norton?" said Bill. "That makes two meals Skinny had given to him, not counting the dinner at Richmond's the next day, which he hasn't told about yet. That makes three. Didn't he have to cook them himself on account of the Scout business?" Before Mr. Norton could answer Skinny spoke up.