y expect a girl to make
much fuss over a young fellow who is like a British tank, when there are
young fellows like shining machine guns, and soaring airplanes--to say
nothing of poison gas.

And after two years of service in the thick of danger, with bombs and
bullets flying all about him; after four months' detention in an enemy
prison camp and six weeks of trench fever, to say nothing of frightful
risks, stolidly ignored, in perilous secret missions, this young chunk
of the old rock of Gibraltar had come home with his life, just because
it had pleased God not to accept the proffer of it, and because Fritzie
shot wild where Tom was concerned. He couldn't help coming back with his
life--it wasn't his fault. It was just because he was the same old Lucky
Luke, that's all.

That had been Roy Blakeley's name for him--Lucky Luke; and he had been
known as Lucky Luke to all of his scout comrades.

You see it was this way: if Tom was going to win a scout award by
finding a certain bird's nest in a certain tree, when he got to the
place he would find that the tree had been chopped down. Once he was
going to win the pathfinder's badge by trailing a burglar, and he
trailed him seven miles through the woods and found that the burglar was
his own good-for-nothing father. So he did not go back and claim the
award. You see? Lucky Luke.

Once (oh, this happened several years before) he helped a boy in his
patrol to become an Eagle Scout. It was the talk of Temple Camp how,
one more merit badge (astronomy) and Will O'Connor would be an Eagle
Scout and Tom Slade, leader of the Elks, would have the only Eagle Scout
at Camp in his patrol. He didn't care so much about being an Eagle Scout
himself, but he wanted Will O'Connor to be an Eagle Scout; he wanted to
have an Eagle Scout in his patrol.

Then, just before Will O'Connor qualified for the Astronomy Badge, he
went to live with his uncle in Cincinnati and the Buffalo Patrol of the
Third Cincinnati Troop pretty soon had an Eagle Scout among their
number, and the Cincinnati troop got its name into _Scouting_ and _Boy's
Life_. Lucky Luke!

It was characteristic of Tom Slade that he did not show any
disappointment at this sequel of all his striving. Much less had he any
jealousy, for he did not know there was such a word in the dictionary.
He just started in again to make Bert McAlpin an Eagle Scout and when he
had jammed Bert through all the stunts but two, Uncle Sam deliberately
w