was a great bore. As fast as
the holes were bored, Pee-wee had tied the strips of leather through
them, and the whole job had been finished in the one evening.

Tom had broken his gimlet and three extra ones which fortunately some
one had brought. The hickory had proven as stubborn as he was
himself--which is saying a great deal.

He had tried boring from each side so that the holes would meet in the
middle; but the holes never met. When he had bored all the way through
from one side, he had either broken the gimlet or the hole had come
slantingways and the gimlet had come out, like a woodchuck in his
burrow, where it had least been expected to appear.

And now, to cap the climax, he was to stand outside one of the
registration places the next day and pin little flags on the young men
as they came out after registering. The other members of the troop were
to be distributed all through the county for this purpose (wherever
there was no local scout troop), and each scout, or group of scouts,
would sally heroically forth in the morning armed with a shoebox full
of these honorable mementoes, made by the girls of Bridgeboro.

And meanwhile, thought Tom, the Germans were sinking our ships and
dropping bombs on hospitals and hitting below the belt, generally. He
was not at all satisfied with himself, or with his trifling, ineffective
part in the great war. He felt that he had made a bungle of everything
so far, and his mind turned contemptuously from these inglorious duties
in which he had been engaged to the more heroic role of the real
soldier.

Perhaps his long trousers had had something to do with his
dissatisfaction; in any event, they made his bungling seem the more
ridiculous. His fellow scouts had called him "bull head" and "butter
fingers," but only in good humor and because they loved to jolly him;
for in plain fact they all knew and admitted that Tom Slade, former
hoodlum, was the best all-round scout that ever raised his hand and
promised to do his duty to God and Country and to obey the Scout Law.

The fact was that Tom was clumsy and rough--perhaps a little
uncouth--and he could do big things but not little things.

As he ambled along the dark street, nursing his disgruntled mood, he
came to Rockwood Place and turned into it, though it did not afford him
the shortest way home. But in his sullen mood one street was as good as
another, and Rockwood Place had that fascination for him which wealth
and luxury