What he thought funny was this: being an observant scout he had noticed that Tom carried more rations than a scout would be likely to take on a long hike, through a country where food could easily be bought in a hundred towns and villages, and also that one who limped as Tom did should choose to go on a hike of more than a hundred miles. A scout, as everybody knows, is observant. And this particular scout was good at arithmetic. At least he was able to put two and two together.... CHAPTER XXX THE TROOP ARRIVES The ten forty-seven train out of New York went thundering up the shore of the lordly Hudson packed and jammed with its surging throng of vacationists who had turned themselves into sardines in order to enjoy a breath of fresh air. The crowd was uncommonly large because Saturday and the first of August came on the same day. They crowded three in a seat and ate sandwiches and drank cold coffee out of milk bottles and let the children fly paper-bag kites out of the windows, and crowded six deep at the water cooler at the end of the car. In all that motley throng there was just one individual who had mastered the art of carrying a brimful paper drinking-cup through the aisle without spilling so much as a drop of water, and his cheerful ministrations were in great demand by thirsty passengers. This individual was scout Harris, alias Peewee, alias Kid, alias Shorty, alias Speck, and he was so small that he might have saved his carfare by going parcel post if he had cared to do so. If he had, he should have been registered, for there was only one Peewee Harris in all the wide world. "Are we going to carry the tent or send it up by the camp wagon?" Roy Blakeley asked, as he and the others crowded each other off the train at Catskill Landing. "Answer in the positive or negative." "You mean the infirmative," Peewee shouted; "that shows how much you know about rhetoric." "You mean logic," Roy said. "I know I'm hungry anyway," Peewee shouted as he threw a suitcase from his vantage point on the platform, with such precision of aim that it landed plunk on Connie Bennett's head, to the infinite amusement of the passengers. "Did it hurt you?" Peewee called. "He isn't injured--just slightly killed," Roy shouted; "hurry up, let's go up in the wagon and get there in time for a light lunch." "You mean a heavy one," Peewee yelled; "here, catch this suitcase." The suitcase landed on somebody's head, was promptly hurled at somebody else, and the usual pandemonium caused by Temple Camp arrivals prevailed until the entire crowd of scouts found themselves packed in the big camp stage, and waving their hands and shouting uproariously at the passengers in the departing train. "First season at camp?" Roy asked a scout who almost sat on his lap and was jogged out of place at every turn in the road. "Yop," was the answer, "we've never been east before; we came from Ohio. We haven't been around anywhere."