hit into the main road and go down through Catskill?
You're likely to miss the train this way."

"I'm going to hike home," Tom said.

"Far?"

"In Jersey, about twenty miles from the city."

"Some jaunt, eh?" Archer inquired pleasantly.

"I don't mind it," Tom said.

"What are you goin' home for?"

"Because I want to; because I'm finished," Tom said.

This ended the talk but it did not end Archer's rather curious study of
Tom. He said little more, but as he rowed, he watched Tom with an
intense and scrutinizing interest. And even after Tom had said good-bye
to him and started up the trail through the woods, he rowed around, in
the vicinity of the shore, keeping the boat in such position that he
could follow Tom with his eyes as the latter followed the trail in and
out among the trees.

"Humph," he said to himself; "funny."

What he thought funny was this: being an observant scout he had noticed
that Tom carried more rations than a scout would be likely to take on a
long hike, through a country where food could easily be bought in a
hundred towns and villages, and also that one who limped as Tom did
should choose to go on a hike of more than a hundred miles.

A scout, as everybody knows, is observant. And this particular scout was
good at arithmetic. At least he was able to put two and two
together....

CHAPTER XXX

THE TROOP ARRIVES

The ten forty-seven train out of New York went thundering up the shore
of the lordly Hudson packed and jammed with its surging throng of
vacationists who had turned themselves into sardines in order to enjoy a
breath of fresh air. The crowd was uncommonly large because Saturday and
the first of August came on the same day. They crowded three in a seat
and ate sandwiches and drank cold coffee out of milk bottles and let the
children fly paper-bag kites out of the windows, and crowded six deep at
the water cooler at the end of the car.

In all that motley throng there was just one individual who had mastered
the art of carrying a brimful paper drinking-cup through the aisle
without spilling so much as a drop of water, and his cheerful
ministrations were in great demand by thirsty passengers. This
individual was scout Harris, alias Peewee, alias Kid, alias Shorty,
alias Speck, and he was so small that he might have saved his carfare by
going parcel post if he had cared to do so. If he had, he should have
been registered, for there was only one Peewee Harris in all t