Tom Slade said not a word. With him actions
always spoke louder than words and he had no words to explain his
actions.

"All I've got to say to _you_" said Roy turning suddenly upon him, "is
that as long as you care so much more about scouts out west than you do
about your own troop, you'd better stay away from here--that's all I've
got to say."

"That's what I say, too," said Westy.

"Same here," Connie said; "Jiminies, after all we did for you, to put
one over on us like that; I don't see what you want to come here for
anyway."

"I--I haven't got any other place to go," said Tom with touching
honesty; "it's kind of like a home----"

"Well, there's one other place and that's the street," said Roy. "We
haven't got any place to go either, thanks to you. You're a nice one to
be shouting home sweet home--you are."

With a trembling hand, Tom Slade reached for his hat and fingering it
nervously, paused for just a moment, irresolute.

"I wouldn't stay if I'm not wanted," he said; "I'll say good night."

No one answered him, and he went forth into the night.

He had been put out of the tenement where he had once lived with his
poor mother, he had been put out of school as a young boy, and he had
been put out of the Public Library once; so he was not unaccustomed to
being put out. Down near the station he climbed the steps of Wop Harry's
lunch wagon and had a sandwich and a cup of coffee. Then he went
home--if one might call it home....

CHAPTER IX

ROY'S NATURE

Roy Blakeley was a scout of the scouts, and no sooner had he got away
from the atmosphere of resentment and disappointment which pervaded the
troop room, then he began to feel sorry for what he had said. The
picture of Tom picking up his hat and going forth into the night and to
his poor home, lingered in Roy's mind and he lay awake half the night
thinking of it.

He had no explanation of Tom's singular act, except the very plausible
one that Tom had lost his former lively interest in the troop, even so
much as to have forgotten about those three cabins to which they had
always seemed to have a prior right; which had been like home to them in
the summertime.

When you look through green glass everything is green, and now Roy
thought he could remember many little instances of Tom's waning interest
in the troop. Naturally enough, Roy thought, these scout games and
preparations for camping seemed tame enough to one who had gone to
France and