haunted Roscoe. "If I could only know where
he is," he said to himself; "if I could bring him back, I'd tell the
whole business."

It occurred to him that perhaps Tom was dead and that that was why he
was continually seeing that stolid face with the bloody scar. "Maybe the
cut got worse and he got blood poisoning and died," he thought.

This train of thought possessed him so that he grew to believe that Tom
Slade must really be dead. And that being the case, there would be no
use in telling anybody anything....

At breakfast he seemed so preoccupied that after he left the room his
mother said to his father,

"You don't think he's nervous or timid, do you?"

"I think he's a little nervous about making a speech in public," said
Mr. Bent. "He isn't afraid of anything else," he added proudly.

During the morning Mrs. Bent wanted to take his picture. "You look so
splendid and handsome in your uniform, dear!" she told him. So he stood
in the big bay window where the sunlight streamed in and let her snap
the camera at him. He did look splendid and handsome, there was no
denying that.

Then she would have him develop the film with his own hands so that she
could make some prints right away. "You may not have another leave," she
said. "It's dreadful that you have to go back to camp late to-night."

"Don't you care," he laughed, in that companionable way in which he
always talked with his mother.

"You can take one of the prints over to East Bridgeboro to-night," she
added, as an inducement to his developing the film at once.

"Think she'd like to have one?"

"The idea! Of course she would."

So, to please his mother, Roscoe took off Uncle Sam's service coat, put
on a kitchen apron, and went into his little familiar dark closet to
wrestle with chemicals.

And there again, in the dim light of the red lantern, and the deathlike
quiet, he saw that face--with the cut and the thick, disordered hair,
and the big, tight-set mouth. "You can see yourself it wouldn't do for
anybody to know," he fancied the lips saying. "If you told, it would
spoil it all----"

"I won't spoil it," Roscoe mumbled, as if he were doing the shadowy
presence a great favor.

Private Bent, who was going to "can the Kaiser," was glad to get out of
that dark, stuffy place.

In the afternoon he went down into the cellar to grease and cover up his
motorcycle in anticipation of his long absence "over there." This would
be his last chance to do it,