nd went down, scout pace, through Main Street, laboriously
hoisting his belt axe up with every other step. It was very heavy and a
great nuisance to his favorite gait, but he had worn it regularly to
scout meeting ever since war had been declared.

CHAPTER II

"BULL HEAD" AND "BUTTER FINGERS"

The lateness of the hour did not incline Tom to hurry on his journey
homeward. He was thoroughly discouraged and dissatisfied with himself,
and it pleased his mood to amble along kicking a stone in front of him
until he lost it in the darkness. Without this vent to his distemper he
became still more sullen. It would have been better if he had hunted up
the stone and gone on kicking it. But now he was angry at the stone too.
He was angry at everybody and everything.

Ever since war had been declared Tom had worked with the troop, doing
his bit under Mr. Ellsworth's supervision, and everything he had done he
had done wrong--in his own estimation.

The Red Cross bandages which he had rolled had had to be rolled over
again. The seeds which he had planted had not come up, because he had
buried them instead of planting them. Roy's onion plants were peeping
coyly forth in the troop's patriotic garden; Doc Carson's lettuce was
showing the proper spirit; a little regiment of humble radishes was
mobilizing under the loving care of Connie Bennett, and Pee-wee's
tomatoes were bold with flaunting blossoms. A bashful cucumber which
basked unobtrusively in the wetness of the ice-box outlet under the shed
at Artie Van Arlen's home was growing apace. But not a sign was there of
Tom's beans or peas or beets--nothing in his little allotted patch but a
lonely plantain which he had carefully nursed until Pee-wee had told him
the bitter truth--that this child of his heart was nothing but a vulgar
weed.

It is true that Roy Blakeley had tried to comfort Tom by telling him
that if his seeds did not come up in Bridgeboro they might come up in
China, for they were as near to one place as the other! Tom had not been
comforted.

His most notable failure, however, had come this very week when three
hundred formidable hickory sticks had been received by the Home Defense
League and turned over to the Scouts to have holes bored through them
for the leather thongs.

There had been a special scout meeting for this work; every scout had
come equipped with a gimlet, and there was such a boring seance as had
never been known before. Roy had said it