steps of that stuffy den when whom should
he see staring at him from directly across the street but Worry Benson
and Will McAdam, of the other local scout troop.

They were evidently bent on some patriotic duty when they paused in
surprise at seeing him, for they had with them a big flag pole and
several bundles which looked as if they might contain printed matter.

Tom thought that perhaps these were a rush order of programs for the
patriotic rally, and he wondered if they might possibly contain his
name--printed in type.

But he thrust the thought away from him and, clutching his five dollars
in his pocket, he turned down the street and started along the good
scout trail.

CHAPTER VIII

AN ACCIDENT

The latter part of the afternoon found Tom many miles from Bridgeboro,
and the trail which had passed through such sordid and pride-racking
surroundings back in his home town, now led up through a quiet woodland,
where there was no sound but the singing of the birds and an occasional
rustle or breaking of a twig as some startled wild creature hurried to
shelter.

Through the intertwined foliage overhead Tom could catch little glints
of the blue sky, and once, when he climbed a tree to get his bearings,
he could see, far in the distance, the lake and the clearing of Temple
Camp, and could even distinguish the flagpole.

But no flag flew from it, for the season had not yet begun; Jeb Rushmore
was on a visit to his former "pals" in the West, and the camp was
closed tight. Down there was where Tom had won the Gold Cross.

He would have liked to see a flag waving, for Bridgeboro, with all its
patriotic fervor and bustle, seemed very far away now, and though he was
in a country which he loved and which meant much to him, he would have
been glad of some tangible reminder that he was, as he had told himself,
_with the Colors_.

Tom had left the train at Catskill Landing and reached the hill by a
circuitous, unfrequented route, hoping to reach, before dark, the
clearer path which he himself had made and blazed from the vicinity of
Temple Camp to the little hunting shack upon the hill's summit. This, he
felt sure, was the path Roscoe would follow.

It was almost dark when, having picked his way through a very jungle
where there was no more sign of path than there is in the sky, he
emerged upon the familiar trail at a point about a mile below the shack.

He was breathless from his tussle with the tangled underb