"It is, sir," replied Stumper, as proud as though a Field-Marshal had addressed him, "and the first." He looked more closely at the Tramp; he rubbed his eyes, and then produced the scrap of cambric and rubbed them again more carefully than before. Perhaps he, too, had been hoping for a leader! Something very proud and happy stole upon his perspiring face of ochre. He moved a step nearer. "Did you notice it this morning?" he asked in a whisper, "the dawn, I mean? Never saw anything like it in me life before. Thought I was in the Himalayas or the Caucasus again. Astonishin', upon me word--the beauty of it! And the birds! Did you hear 'em? Expect you usually do, though," he added with a touch of unmistakable envy and admiration in his tone. "Uncommon," agreed the Tramp, "and no mistake about it. _They_ knew, you see." They no longer called each other "Sir" and "General"; they had come to an understanding apparently. "Umph!" said Stumper, and looked round shyly at the others. Stumper was evidently under the stress of some divine emotion he was half ashamed of. An unwonted passion stirred him. He seemed a prey to an unusual and irrepressible curiosity. Only the obvious fact that his listeners shared the same feelings with him loosened his sticky tongue and stole self-consciousness away. He had expected to be laughed at. Instead the group admired him. The Tramp--his manner proved it--thought of him very highly indeed. "Never knew such a day in all me life before," Stumper admitted frankly. "Couldn't--simply couldn't stay indoors." He still retained a trace of challenge in his tone. But no one challenged. Judy took his arm. "So you came out?" she said softly. "Like us," said Uncle Felix. "Of course," Tim added. But it was the Tramp who supplied the significant words they had all been waiting for, Stumper himself more eagerly than any one else. "To look," he remarked quite naturally. Stumper might have just won a great world-victory, judging by the expression that danced upon his face. He dropped all pretence at further concealment. He put his other arm round Tim's shoulder, partly to balance himself better against Judy's pushing, and partly because he realised the companionship of both children as very dear just then. He had a great deal to say, and wanted to say it all at once, but words never came to him too easily; he had missed many an opportunity in life for the want of fluent and spontaneous address. He stammered and halted somewhat in his delivery. A new language with but a single word in it would have suited him admirably. "Yes," he growled, "I came out--to look. But when I got out--I clean forgot what it was--who, I mean--no, _what_," he corrected himself again, "I'd come out to look for. Can't make it out at all." He broke off in a troubled way. "No?" agreed Judy sympathetically, as though _she_ knew. "But you want to find it awfully," Tim stated as a fact. "Awfully," admitted Stumper with a kind of fierceness.