VII

The Shanty


He had none but the poorest of tools, but he set about building a
shanty. He was not a resourceful boy. His effort to win the book
had been an unusual one for him, as his instincts were not at all
commercial. When that matter came to the knowledge of the Home
Government, he was rebuked for doing "work unworthy of a gentleman's
son" and forbidden under frightful penalties "ever again to resort to
such degrading ways of raising money."

They gave him no money, so he was penniless. Most boys would have
possessed themselves somehow of a good axe and spade. He had neither.
An old plane blade, fastened to a stick with nails, was all the axe
and spade he had, yet with this he set to work and offset its poorness
as a tool by dogged persistency. First, he selected the quietest
spot near the spring--a bank hidden by a mass of foliage. He knew no
special reason for hiding it, beyond the love of secrecy. He had
read in some of his books "how the wily scouts led the way through a
pathless jungle, pulled aside a bough and there revealed a comfortable
dwelling that none without the secret could possibly have discovered,"
so it seemed very proper to make it a complete mystery--a sort of
secret panel in the enchanted castle--and so picture himself as the
wily scout leading his wondering companions to the shanty, though, of
course, he had not made up his mind to reveal his secret to any one.
He often wished he could have the advantage of Rad's strong arms and