t another guess, I can tell you that much!"

"I never told you you should lie," said Tom with straightforward
simplicity, "and I admit I forgot about the cabins. I was away two
summers. I had a lot of different things to think about. I got
shell-shocked the very same night I met that fellow, and that's got
something to do with it, maybe. But I wouldn't stand here, I wouldn't,
and try to prove that I didn't tell a lie. If you want to think I did,
go ahead and think so. And if the rest of the troop want to think so,
let them do it. If anybody says I forgot about the scouts, he lies. And
you can tell them they won't lose anything, either; you can tell them I
said so. I ain't changed. Didn't I--didn't I ride my motorcycle all the
way from Paris to the coast--through the floods--didn't I? Do you think
it's going to be hard to make everything right? I--I can do anything--I
can. And I didn't lie, either. You go up to Temple Camp on the first of
August like you--like we--always did; that's all _I_ say."

He was excited now, and his hand trembled, and Roy looked at him a bit
puzzled, but he was neither softened nor convinced. "Didn't you as much
as say you didn't know anything about who made that application--didn't
you?" Roy demanded.

"I said it good and plain and you can go and tell them so, too," Tom
said.

"And you do know this fellow named Barnard, don't you?"

"I know him and he saved my life," Tom said, "and if you----"

"Going up," the colored boy called again.

And the young fellow, scout and soldier, who would not bother to prove
his truthfulness to his old companion and friend, was gone. He had hit
his own trail in his own way, as he usually did; a long devious,
difficult, lonesome trail. The clearly defined trail of the sidewalk
leading to the troop room, where a few words of explanation might have
straightened everything out, was not the trail for Tom Slade, scout. He
would straighten things out another way. He would face this thing, not
run away from it, just as he had set his big resolute mouth and faced
Pete Connigan. They would lose nothing, these boys. Let them think what
they might, they would lose nothing. To be falsely accused, what was
that, provided these boys lost nothing? That was all that counted. What
difference did it make if they thought he had lied and deceived them, so
long as _he_ knew that he had not?

And what a lot of fuss about three cabins! Had he not the power to
straighten out his