ROY

59 XII   THE LONG TRAIL 66 XIII   ROY'S TRAIL 73 XIV   THE REALLY HARD PART 76 XV   A LETTER FROM BARNARD 80 XVI   THE EPISODE IN FRANCE 86 XVII   ON THE LONG TRAIL 94 XVIII   TOM LETS THE CAT OUT OF THE BAG 101 XIX   THE SPECTRE OF DEFEAT 106 XX   THE FRIEND IN NEED 110 XXI   TOM'S GUEST 117 XXII   AN ACCIDENT 122 XXIII   FRIENDS 132 XXIV   TOM GOES ON AN ERRAND 138 XXV   TWO LETTERS 147 XXVI   LUCKY LUKE'S FRIEND 152 XXVII   THORNTON'S STORY 158 XXVIII   RED THORNTON LEARNS SOMETHING ABOUT SCOUTS 170 XXIX   TOM STARTS FOR HOME 176 XXX   THE TROOP ARRIVES 182 XXXI   ARCHER 193 XXXII   TOM LOSES 196

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TOM SLADE AT BLACK LAKE

Tom Slade, bending over the office table, scrutinized the big map of Temple Camp. It was the first time he had really looked at it since his return from France, and it made him homesick to see, even in its cold outlines, the familiar things and scenes which he had so loved as a scout. The hill trail was nothing but a dotted line, but Tom knew it for more than that, for it was along its winding way into the dark recesses of the mountains that he had qualified for the pathfinder's badge. Black Lake was just an irregular circle, but in his mind's eye he saw there the moonlight glinting up the water, and canoes gliding silently, and heard the merry voices of scouts diving from the springboard at its edge.

He liked this map better than maps of billets and trenches, and to him the hill trail was more suggestive of adventure than the Hindenburg Line. He had been very close to the Hindenburg Line and it had meant no more to him than the equator. He had found the war to be like a three-ringed circus—it was too big. Temple Camp was about the right size.

Tom reached for a slip of paper and laying it upon the map just where the trail went over the hilltop and off the camp territory altogether, jotted down the numbers of three cabins which were indicated by little squares.

"They're the only three together and kind of separate," he said to himself.

Then he went over to the window and gazed out upon the busy scene, which the city office of Temple Camp overlooked. He did this, not because there was anything there which he wished particularly to see, but because he contemplated doing something and was in some perplexity about it. He was going to dictate a letter to Miss Margaret Ellison, the stenographer.

Tom had seen cannons and machine guns and hand grenades and depth bombs, but the thing in all this world that he was most afraid of was the long sharply pointed pencil which Miss Margaret Ellison always held poised above her open note book, waiting to record his words. Tom had always fallen down at the last minute