into the brighter light and clearer air of Main Street,
and now the good scout trail, which indeed had not disappointed him, led
them toward the quiet river and the willows and the hilly banks and
across the bridge, from which he showed her the troop's cabin boat (soon
to be plastered with Liberty Loan posters), and into the rural quiet of
East Bridgeboro.

"I said it was a trail," said Tom.

"Yes?"

"I mean everything you do--kind of. It's just a trail. You don't know
where it'll take you."

"It's just brought you back to the same place, hasn't it?" she said.

"But it won't stop," said Tom. "It don't make any difference, anyway, as
long as you hit the right one. Once I thought it was kind of a crazy
notion about everything you do being a trail. But now I know different.
And if you do the wrong thing, you get on the wrong trail, that's all.
Maybe you don't understand exactly what I mean."

"I do understand."

"It's brought me right back to where I'm talking to you again the same
as on Registration Day. So you see it's a good trail. I got a kind of an
idea that there can be a trail in your brain--like.--Often I think of
things like that that I can't make other people understand--not even Roy
sometimes.--I guess maybe girls understand better."

"Maybe," she said. "Do you see I'm wearing the little badge you gave me
yet?"

They strolled on, following the trail, and neither spoke for a few
minutes.

"In the end you don't get misjudged," said Tom simply, "because if you
get on the right trail it'll bring you to the right place. If you've got
the right on your side, you got to win."

"And that's why we'll win the war," she said.

"A feller that maybe got drowned told me about a little girl in London
that got blown up while she was studying her lessons. And when I heard
that I knew we'd win."

"Uncle Sam's like you, Tom," she laughed. "When he makes up his mind to
do a thing.... Do you remember how you told me you had a good muscle?
Uncle Sam's got a good muscle, don't you think?"

"I was thinking something like that when I looked at Roscoe to-night,"
he said. "We got to trust to Uncle Sam."

"The whole world is trusting to Uncle Sam now."

"He's got the muscle," said Tom.

"Yes."

The trail led through a fragrant avenue of evergreens now, through a
solitude where Tom had often hiked, and presently they turned into the
path which formed the short cut to the girl's home. Across the river, on
the top of