and told her what he wanted to say; suggesting that she say it in her own sweet way. He did not say sweet way, though he may have thought it.

So now he stood at the open window looking down upon Bridgeboro's surging thoroughfare, while the breath of Spring permeated the Temple Camp office. If he had been less susceptible of this gentle influence in the very air, he would still have known it was Spring by the things in the store windows across the way—straw hats and hammocks and tennis rackets. There were moving vans, too, with furniture bulging out behind them, which are just as certain signs of merry May as the flowers that bloom in the Spring. There was something too, in the way that the sun moved down which bespoke Spring.

But the surest sign of all was the flood of applications for cabin accommodations at Temple Camp; that was just as sure and reliable as the first croaking of the frogs or the softening of the rich, thick mud in Barrel Alley, where Tom had spent his childhood.

He moved over to where Miss Margaret Ellison sat at her machine. Mr. Burton, manager of the Temple Camp office, had told Tom that the only way to acquire confidence and readiness of speech was to formulate what he wished to say and to say it, without depending on any one else, and to this good advice, Peewee Harris, mascot of Tom's Scout Troop had made the additional suggestion, that it was good to say it whether you had anything to say or not, on the theory, I suppose, that if you cannot shoot bullets, it is better to shoot blank cartridges than nothing at all.

"Help him, but encourage him to be self-confident; let him take responsibilities. He understands everything well enough; all he needs is to get a grip on himself." That is what Mr. Burton had told Margaret Ellison, and Margaret Ellison, being a girl, understood better than all the army surgeons in the country.

You see how it was; they had made a wreck of Tom Slade's nerves as a trifling incidental to making the world safe for democracy. He started at every little noise, he broke down in the middle of his talk, he hesitated to cross the street alone, he shuddered at the report of a bursting tire on some unlucky auto. He had never been at ease in the presence of girls, and he was now less at ease than before he had gone away.

He had fought for nearly two years and Uncle Sam liked him so much that he could not bring himself to part company with him, until by hook or crook, Mr. Burton and Mr. Temple managed to get him discharged and put him in the way of finding himself at his old job in Temple Camp office. It was a great relief to him not to have to salute lieutenants any more. The shot and shell he did not mind, but his arm was weary with saluting lieutenants. It was the dream of Tom Slade's life never to see another lieutenant as long as he lived.

He leaned against the table near Miss Margaret Ellison and said, "I—I want—I have to send a letter to a troop that's in Ohio—in a place called—called Dansburg. Shall I dic—shall I say what I want to tell them?"

"Surely," she said cheerily.

"Maybe if it isn't just right you can fix it up," he said.

"You say it just the way you want to," she encouraged him.

"It's to the Second Dansburg Troop and the name of the scoutmaster is William Barnard," Tom said, "and this is what I want to say...."

"Yes, say it in your own words," she reminded him.

"We got—I mean received," he dictated hesitatingly, "your letter and we can give you—can give you—three cabins—three cabins together and kind of separate like you say—numbers five, six, and seven. They are on the hill and separate, and we hope to hear from you—soon—because there are lots of troops asking for cabins, because now the season is beginning. Yours truly."

"Is that all right?" he asked rather doubtfully.

"Surely it is," she said; "and don't forget what Mr. Burton told you about going home early and resting. Remember, Mr. Burton is your superior officer now."

"Are you going home soon?" he asked her.

"Not till half-past five," she said.

He hesitated as if he would like to say something more, then retreating rather clumsily, he got his hat and said good-night, and left the office.

The letter which he had dictated was not laid upon Mr. Burton's desk for signature in exactly the phraseology which Tom had used, but Tom never knew that. This is the way the letter read:

The letter went out that night, and as it happened, a very considerable series of adventures resulted.

Perhaps if Margaret Ellison had looked at the map or even stopped to think, she would have consulted with Tom before typing that letter, which was the cause of such momentous consequences. As for Mr. Burton, he knew that Tom knew the camp like A. B. C. and he simply signed his name to the letter and let it go at that.

Tom did as he had promised Mr. Burton he would do; he went home and lay down and rested. It was not much of a home, but it was better than a dugout. That is, it was cleaner though not very much larger. But there were no lieutenants.

It was a tiny hall-room in a boarding house, and the single window afforded a beautiful view of back fences. It was all the home that Tom Slade knew. He had no family, no relations, nothing.

He had been born in a tenement in Barrel Alley, where his mother had died and from which his good-for-nothing father had disappeared. For a while he had been a waif and a hoodlum, and by strict attention to the code of Barrel Alley's gang, he had risen to be king of the hoodlums. No one, not even Blokey Mattenburg himself, could throw a rock into a trolley car with the precision of Tom Slade.

Then, on an evil day, he was tempted to watch the scouts and it proved fatal. He was drawn head over ears into scouting, and became leader of the new Elk Patrol in the First Bridgeboro Troop. For three seasons he was a familiar, if rather odd figure, at Temple Camp, which Mr. John Temple of Bridgeboro had founded in the Catskills, and when he was old enough to work it seemed natural that these kindly gentlemen who had his welfare at heart, should put him into the city office of the camp, which he left to go to war, and to which he had but lately returned, suffering from shell-shock.

He was now eighteen years old, and though no longer a scout in the ordinary sense, he retained his connection with the troop in capacity of assistant to Mr. Ellsworth, the troop's scoutmaster.

He had been rather older than the members of this troop when he made his spectacular leap from hoodlumism to scouting, and hence while they