Perhaps some of my readers would like to know what became of Sim. Well, Sim has a job doing odd tasks for Cap. Hudgins out on Topsail Island. Previous to undertaking these duties for the good-hearted captain Sim had another job, but he did not hold it long.
His employer, a well-to-do man in the town, met Sim the first morning he came to work and thereafter did not see him for two whole days. Finally Sim was discovered asleep in the barn on a soft truss of hay.
“Say, have you been sleeping ever since I hired you?” asked Sim’s new employer indignantly.
“I do not come, sir, of a hard-working race,” rejoined Sim, still with his old habit strong upon him; “your ‘ad’ said, ‘Boy wanted to sleep on the place.’”
One afternoon in early June there were unwonted doings in Hampton. The annual Firemen’s Carnival was on, with a parade of Boy Scouts as a special feature. Big crowds lined the streets on foot, in buggies and in autos to see the big parade pass under the flaunting banners and decorations.
The cheers were loud and long for the firemen of the different villages as they swung by with their equipment, but presently a shout went down the line of spectators:
What a shout arose then! The others sounded no louder than a pop-gun beside a cannon, compared to it. Headed by a band playing a lively quick-step the serried ranks of bright young faces and well set-up figures went swinging by, keeping perfect step. At the head of the Eagle division, with its green and black standard, came our young friends. On the breast of each, besides their Red Honors, glittered three brand new gold medals, the gift of the War Department.
“The Boy Scouts’ organization surely is a fine thing for those youngsters,” remarked Lieutenant Duvall to Mr. Blake, as the two stood outside the bank and watched the spectacle.
“It is, indeed,” agreed Mr. Blake. “It is going to make good men of them, too,” he added.
And here, with the blare of martial music in our ears and before our eyes the sight of row upon row of orderly, nattily-uniformed boys swinging by to the lively air of “The Boy Scouts’ March,” we will for the present take leave of our friends of the Eagle Patrol, to resume their acquaintance in another volume of this series, in which their further adventures and exciting doings will be related in full. This volume I shall call, “THE BOY SCOUTS’ MOUNTAIN CAMP.”