e. After a moment he turned and went down the hill and
around the corner of the big bank building, passed Ching Woo's laundry,
into which he had once thrown dirty barrel staves, picked his way
through the mud of Barrel Alley and entered the door of the tenement
where Mrs. O'Connor lived. He had not slept there for three nights. The
sound of cats wailing and trucks rattling and babies crying was not much
like the soughing of the wind in the elms up on the Blakeley lawn. But
if you have hit the right trail and have a good conscience you can
sleep, and Tom slept fairly well amid the din and uproar.

CHAPTER V

FIRST COUP OF THE MASCOT

Anyway, he slept better than Roy slept. All night long the leader of the
Silver Foxes was haunted by that letter. The darkness, the breeze, the
soothing music of crickets and locusts outside his little tent
dissipated his anger, as the voices of nature are pretty sure to do, and
made him see straight, to use Tom's phrase.

He thought of Tom making his lonely way back to Barrel Alley and going
to bed there amid the very scenes which he had been so anxious to have
him forget. He fancied him sitting on the edge of his cot in Mrs.
O'Connor's stuffy dining room, reading his Scout Manual. He was always
reading his Manual; he had it all marked up like a blazed trail. Roy got
small consolation now from the fact that he had procured Tom's election.
If Tom had been angry at him, his conscience would be easier now; but
Tom seldom got mad.

In imagination he followed that letter to the Temple home. He saw it
laid at Mary's place at the dining table. He saw her come dancing in to
breakfast and pick it up and wave it gaily. He saw John Temple reading
his paper at the head of the table and advising with Mary, who was his
partner in the Temple Camp enterprise. He knew it was for her sake quite
as much as for the scouts that Mr. Temple had made this splendid gift,
and he knew (for he had dined at Grantley Square) just how father and
daughter conferred together. Why, who was it but Mary that told John
Temple there must be ten thousand wooden plates and goodness knows how
many sanitary drinking cups? Mary had it all marked in the catalogues.

Roy pictured her as she opened the letter and read it,--that rude,
selfish note. He wondered what she would say. And he wondered what John
Temple would think. It would be such a surprise to her that poor little
Pee-wee was not wanted.

In the morning Roy a