exasperatingly and hit him a rap on the shoulder.
"Anybody accuse you of being that?"

"That's what they think," said Tom.

"Oh, no, they don't, Tommy. But they've got to be careful. Don't you
know they have?"

"I got to go and--get shot--maybe."

"So? Fancy that! Sit down here and tell me the whole business, Tommy.
What's it all about?"

"I--got to admit it looks bad----"

"They wouldn't have done anything with you till they saw me, Tommy. Even
if they had to take you back to New York. Trouble was, Wessel's dying.
How could they prove what you said about me getting you the job?"

He put his arm over Tom's shoulder as they sat down upon the leather
settee, and the effect of all the dread and humiliation and injustice
and shame welled up in the boy now under that friendly touch and he went
to pieces entirely.

"Did you think I didn't know what I was doing when I picked you, Tommy?"

Tom could not answer, but sat there with his breast heaving, his hand
on Mr. Conne's knee.

"Did you just find your brother there by accident, Tom?"

"I--I got to be--ashamed----"

"Yes," Mr. Conne said kindly; "you've got to be ashamed of _him_. But
you see, I haven't got to be ashamed of you, have I? How'd you find out
about it? Tell me the whole thing, Tom."

And so, sitting there with this shrewd man who had befriended him, Tom
told the whole story as he could not have told it to anyone else. He
went away back into the old Barrel Alley days, when he had "swiped"
apples from Adolf Schmitt and his brother Bill had worked in Schmitt's
grocery store. He told how it used to make him mad when his brother "got
licked unfair," as he said, and he did not know why Mr. Conne screwed up
his face at that. He told about how he "had to decide quick, kind of,"
when the officers confronted him in his brother's stateroom, and how the
thought about Uncle Sam being his uncle had decided him. He told how he
had had to keep his face turned away from his brother so that he
"wouldn't feel so mean, like." And here again Mr. Conne gave his face
another screw and Tom did not understand why. That was one trouble with
Tom Slade--he was so thick that he could not understand a lot of things
that were perfectly plain to other people.

CHAPTER XVIII

HE TALKS WITH MR. CONNE AND SEES THE BOYS START FOR THE FRONT

"What--what do you think they'll do with him?"

It was the question uppermost in Tom's mind, but he could not bring
himself to ask