unless he got up very early in the morning.
But then he would be an hour over his leave in getting back to camp late
to-night on a milk train. A soldier's honor must not be sullied by a
stolen hour....

And there again Roscoe Bent saw that face. It was a little more than a
face this time. He could almost have sworn that he saw the figure of Tom
Slade standing over in the dark corner near the coal bins; and as
Roscoe, kneeling by his motorcycle, fixed his eyes upon this thing
another sentence ran through his thoughts: "Those secret service
fellows--do yer think I'd let them get yer? Do you think because you
made fun of me...."

He tried to stare the apparition down, but it would not disappear--not
until he went over to it and saw that it was just a burlap bag full of
kindling wood, with James, the furnace man's, old felt hat thrown upon
it.

"I--I know what it means, all right," he muttered; "it means he's dead."

After supper he parted his wavy blond hair, and his mother brushed his
uniform while he stood straight as an arrow, his handsome head thrown
back. Then his father proudly helped him into his big military coat and
he started for East Bridgeboro, which was across the river. The new
Y. M. C. A. hall was not over there, but he was going there first, just
the same.

"Have you got the print?" his mother called after him.

"Sure."

"The one holding the gun? You look so soldierly and brave in that!"

He laughed as he went down the steps.

But presently he became moody and preoccupied again. "If Mr. Ellsworth
hadn't dragged me into this thing," he said to himself, "it wouldn't be
so bad. It gets my goat to stand up there and shoot off about honor and
all that sort of thing. But I can't do anything else now. I'm not going
to spoil it all. It can't make any difference to Tom now--he's out of
the game. He's through with the scouts, and he's through with
Bridgeboro--dead, I'm afraid. And if I just keep my mouth shut, it'll be
doing just what he wanted me to do; it was _his_ idea."

So that was settled; and in place of those troubling thoughts, Roy
Blakeley bobbed up in his mind--Roy Blakeley, who believed in "standing
by a fellow through thick and thin"; who was staunch and loyal to his
friend.

"He's a bully kid," mused Roscoe, as he crossed the bridge whence the
town derived its name, and the more he thought about Roy the more mean
and contemptible he felt himself to be.

At the scouts' float hard by the b