hink you said you had been in
some Jersey Troop.

If you are the same Tom Slade, then congratulations to you for
getting home safely, and I will promise my scouts that they will
have the chance this summer of meeting the gamest boy on the west
front. I suppose you will be up at the camp yourself.

Send me a line and let me know if you're the young fellow whose arm
I bandaged up. I'm thinking the world isn't so big after all.

Best wishes to you,
WILLIAM BARNARD,

Scoutmaster 1st Dansburg Troop, B.S.A.,
Dansburg, Ohio.

Tom could hardly believe his eyes as he read the letter. William
Barnard! He had never known that fellow's name, but he knew that the
soldier who had bandaged his arm (whatever his name was) had saved his
life. Would he ever forget the long night spent in that dank, dark
shell-hole? Would he ever forget that chance companion in peril, who had
nursed him and cheered him all through that endless night? He could
smell the damp earth again and the pungent atmosphere of gunpowder which
permeated the place and almost suffocated him. Directly over the
shell-hole a great British tank had stopped and been deserted, locking
them in as in a dungeon. And when he had recovered from the fumes, he
had heard a voice speaking to him and asking him if he was much hurt.

William Barnard!

And he had given the three cabins on the hill to Scoutmaster Barnard's
troop in Dansburg, Ohio.

No one but Tom had arrived at the office and for just a few moments,
standing there near Miss Ellison's typewriter and with the prosy letter
files about, he was again in France. He could hear the booming of the
great guns again, see the flashes of fire....

He sat down and wrote,

DEAR MR. BARNARD:

I got your letter and I am the same Tom Slade. I was going to ask
you where you lived in America so I could know you some more when we
got back, but when the doctors came to take me away, I didn't see
you anywhere. I had to stay in the hospital three weeks, but it
wasn't on account of my arm, because that wasn't so bad. It was the
shell-shock that was bad--it makes you forget things even after you
get better.

I was sorry early this morning that I gave you those cabins, because
they're the same ones that my own troop always used to have, and it
was a crazy thi