ould be handing badges to the throng of
proud and lucky young men just fresh from registering, while he sat upon
the platform and listened to the music and the speeches in their honor,
Roscoe Bent would be tracing his lonely way up that distant mountain
with the insane notion of camping there. He would try to cheat the
government and disgrace his family.

"I don't see how he could do that--I don't," said Tom. "I wonder what
his father would say if he knew.--I wonder what Miss Ellison would say.
I wonder what his mother would think."

He looked down again into Barrel Alley, and fixed his eyes upon the
tenement where he and his poor mother and his wretched father had lived.
But he was not thinking of his mother now--he was thinking of Roscoe
Bent's mother and of his troubled father, going from place to place and
searching in vain for his fugitive son.

"If I told him," thought Tom, "it would queer Roscoe. It wouldn't do for
anybody to know.... I just got to go and bring him back.... Maybe they'd
let him register to-morrow. He could say--he could say anything he
wanted to about why he was away on the fifth of June. If he comes back
they'll let him register, but if he doesn't they'll find him; they'll
put his name in newspapers and lists and they'll find him. I just got to
go and bring him back. And I got to go without telling anybody anything,
too."

For a few moments longer he stood gazing out of the window down into
that muddy alley where the good scout trail to honor and achievement had
begun for him. For a few moments he thought of where it had brought him
and of the joy and fulfillment which awaited him this very night. He
wondered what people would say if he were not there. Well, in any event,
they would not call him a slacker or a coward. He felt that there was no
danger of being misjudged if he did his highest duty.

"It's kind of like a branch trail I got to follow," he said, his voice
breaking a little. "I said it was a good trail, but now I see there's a
branch trail that goes off, kind of, and I got to follow that...."

But, of course, it wasn't a branch trail at all--it was the main trail,
the true scout trail, which, forgetting all else, he was resolved to
follow.

CHAPTER VI

TOM AND THE GOLD CROSS

Mr. Ellsworth was right when he said that Tom had a way of doping things
out for himself. He had picked up scouting without much help, and he
seldom asked advice.

His duty was very clear to