look at me very closely you wouldn’t know that I was such an awful dub.  This is progress at any rate.  The telephone wires between mother’s house and the camp were dripping wet with tears when I phoned her that I was being shipped.  However, she braced up and said she was proud of me and said she hoped I’d tell the captain good-by and thank him for all he has done.  I assured her I would do this, or at least leave a note.  Polly was a trump.  The Spider talked to her and said that he was going to save the best uncut stone for her that he had ever bitten out of a ring.  The Spider has been very valuable to us all.  He seems to have the uncanny faculty of being able to take the cloth straps off other people’s clothes right before their eyes.  Consequently we are well supplied.  At present he’s looking at the handle of the gate in a musing way.  I think he would like to have it as a souvenir.  Here comes the truck.  Pelham is about to lose its most useless recruit.  I must tuck these priceless pages in my money belt.  Wish I had a picture of Polly.  Well, here’s to the High Adventure, but there’s something about that Submarine Provoker I can’t quite get used to.  It seems just a trifle one sided.  However, that is in the lap of the gods.  Instead of a camp I will soon have the vast expanses of the ocean in which to demonstrate my tremendous inability to emulate the example of one John Paul Jones.

“Bear a hand there, buddy,” the P.O. has just cried at me.

“Buddy” I came in and “buddy” I go out.  We’re off!  I can dimly distinguish Mr. Fogerty, that unscrupulous dog that abandoned my bed and board for a couple of influential yeomen.  Farewell, Fogerty, may your evil ways never bring you to grief.  I do wish I had a picture of my Sweetie.

[Illustration:  “‘BUDDY’ I CAME IN AND ‘BUDDY’ I GO OUT”]

[Illustration:  BILTMORE OSWALD and FOGARTY]

THE END