Read "Hervey Willetts" by Percy Keese Fitzhugh online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
He went to Temple Camp with a check and his nerve, and neither did him any good. I have sometimes thought that this blithesome piece of effrontery marks the high spot in Hervey's career. But I am at a loss to account for it. Of course, he was not without reasoning faculty or memory. I think it was just that he took everything as it came and never burdened his mind with anything. His nature refused to consider two things at once. He could not think of an act of one day in the light of its consequences on another day, much less another season. I cannot follow his reasoning, if he had any; I can only follow his acts. He could hardly have forgotten his dismissal; perhaps, if he thought at all, he thought the management would have forgotten it.
Officially Temple Camp did not pay him the compliment of being shocked by his bizarre reappearance. But the scouts who had been there the previous summer noticed him and commented on the circumstance of his unexpected presence. He was a conspicuous figure in his fantastic hat, as he wandered aimlessly about, and several tenderfeet who had never seen him before were inspired to follow him and look on while he scaled flat stones into the lake. After a while they began selecting stones for him.