ridge, the troop's cabin launch, the
_Good Turn_, participant in many adventures, past and to come, lay
moored.

Even the sophisticated Roscoe, who had never "bothered much with the
kids," knew of this famous boat. There had been a photograph of it
hanging in the Temple Camp office, with the face of Tom Slade peering
out through the little hatchway. The sudden knocking of the hull against
the float in the still night startled him, and as he looked down upon
the moon-lit river with its black background of trees he fancied again
that he saw the face of Tom Slade looking out from the hatchway of the
boat.

"Hello, there!" he called, though of course he knew no one was there.

Once over the bridge, he took a short cut through Morrell's Grove for
the River Road.

"It's best to let well enough alone," he told himself; "what's past is
past. I'm not going to worry about it now. If Ellsworth hadn't hauled me
into this thing, and given me that spiel, I wouldn't be bothering my
head about things that happened months ago. I'm not going to worry."

He was singularly moody and dissatisfied for a person who was not going
to worry.

"Wish I could get that Blakeley kid out of my head," he reflected.

But he couldn't exactly get that Blakeley kid out of his head, and he
couldn't get that face out of his mind, nor Mr. Ellsworth's stinging
words out of his memory. So he stumbled along through the dark grove,
thinking what he should say to the boys and how he should talk to
Margaret Ellison so as not to let her suspect his troubled conscience
and general feeling of--not exactly meanness and dishonor, but....

"Girls are such blamed fiends for reading your thoughts," he grumbled.

About halfway through the grove he stopped suddenly in the narrow path.
For there was that face again peering out of the darkness. There was a
slouch hat on it this time, but the old familiar shock of hair protruded
from under it and there was an ugly scar on the forehead.

"It's blamed dark in here," said Roscoe, as he pulled himself together.
A lonely owl answered with a dismal shriek from a distant tree, making
the night seem still more spooky.

Roscoe tried to whistle to keep up his spirits, but as he walked on
along the path the face, instead of fading away, seemed to become
clearer, and he could have sworn that there was the dark outline of a
form below it leaning against a tree. It was only his fancy enlivened by
his conscience, he knew, but it