in Washington. Perhaps you'll wish to enlist over here
soon. I'm going to give you a little button, _kind of_, as you would
say--to keep in your head. And this is it. Remember, there's only one
person in the world who can disgrace Tom Slade, and that is Tom Slade
himself."

He slapped Tom on the shoulder, and they strolled up the dingy, crooked
street, past the jumble of old brown houses, until it petered out in a
plain where there was a little cemetery, filled with wooden crosses.

"Those poor fellows all did their bit," said Mr. Conne.

Tom looked silently at the straight rows of graves. He seemed to be
getting nearer and nearer to the war.

"How far is the front?" he asked.

"Not as far as from New York to Boston, Tom. Straight over that way is
Paris. When you get past Paris you begin to see the villages all in
ruins,--between the old front and the new front."

"I've hiked as far as that."

"Yes, it isn't far."

"Do you know where our boys are--what part of it?"

"Yes, I know, but I'm not going to tell you," Mr. Conne laughed. "You'd
like to be there, I suppose."

For a few moments Tom did not answer. Then he said in his old dull way,
"I got a right to go now. I got a right to be a soldier, to make up
for--_him_. The next time I get back here I'm going to join. If we don't
get back for six weeks, then I'll be eighteen. I made up my mind now."

Mr. Conne laughed approvingly and Tom gazed, with a kind of fascination,
across the pleasant, undulating country.

"I could even hike it," he repeated; "it seems funny to be so near."

But when finally he did reach the front, it was over the back fence, as
one might say, and after such an experience as he had never dreamed of.

CHAPTER XIX

HE IS CAST AWAY AND IS IN GREAT PERIL

"They're more likely to spill the cup when it's empty," said the deck
steward, who was a sort of walking encyclopedia to Tom.

"I suppose that's because we haven't got such a good convoy going back,"
Tom said.

"That and high visibility. You see, the less there is in the ship, the
higher she sets up in the water, and the higher she sets the better they
can see her. We're in ballast and floating like a balloon. They get
better tips about westbound ships, too. All the French ports are full of
German agents. They come through Switzerland."

The first day out on the voyage homeward was very rough. At about dusk
Tom was descending the steps from the bridge with a large tray wh