ner.

"You're mistaken, my boy. What makes you think it's north?"

"I didn't say I thought so," said Tom. "I said it _is_."

Roscoe laughed. "Same old Tom," he said. "But how do you know it's
north?"

"You remember that mountain up in the Catskills?" Tom said. "The first
time I ever went to the top of that mountain was in the middle of the
night. I never make that kind of mistakes. I know because I just know."

Roscoe laughed again and looked rather dubiously at the light in the
distance. Then he shook his head, unconvinced.

"We've been winding in and out along the edge of this woods," said Tom,
"so that you're kind of mixed up, that's all. It's always those little
turns that throw people out, just like it's a choppy sea that upsets a
boat; it ain't the big waves. I used to get rattled like that myself,
but I don't any more."

Roscoe drew his lips tight and shook his head skeptically. "I can't
understand about that light," he said.

"I always told you you made a mistake not to be a scout when you were
younger," said Tom in that impassive tone which seemed utterly free of
the spirit of criticism and which always amused Roscoe, "'cause then you
wouldn't bother about the light but you'd look at the stars. Those are
sure."

Roscoe looked up at the sky and back at Tom, and perhaps he found a kind
of reassurance in that stolid face. "All right, Tommy," said he, "what
you say, goes. Come ahead."

"That light is probably on the road the Germans retreated across," said
Tom, as they picked their way along. His unerring instinct left him
entirely free from the doubts which Roscoe could not altogether dismiss.
"I don't say there ain't a light on the path you're talking about, but
if we followed this one we'd probably get captured. I was seven months
in a German prison. I don't know how you'd like it, but I didn't."

Roscoe laughed silently at Tom's dry way of putting it. "All right,
Tommy, boy," he said. "Have it your own way."

"You ought to be satisfied the way you can shoot," said Tom, by way of
reconciling Roscoe to his leadership.

"All right, Tommy. Maybe you've got the bump of locality. When we get
past that little arm of the woods just ahead we ought to see the right
light then, huh?"

"_Spur_ is the right name for it, not _arm_," said Tom. "You might as
well say it right."

"The pleasure is mine," laughed Roscoe; "Tommy, you're as good as a
circus."

They made their way in a southeasterly direction, f