ious circumstances than that. But what would they do with an
American? In the case of an American it was just plain treason and the
punishment for treason is----

A feeling almost of nausea overcame him and he tried to put the dreadful
thought away from him.

"Anyway, the whole business is a kind of a mix-up," he told himself; "it
don't make any difference what you do--you get in trouble. But I don't
blame them so much, 'cause they judge by looks, and that's the only way
you can do. Anyway, you got to die some time. I'm glad I found it out
and told 'em, 'cause anyway it don't make any difference if they think I
confessed or just found it out--as long as they know it. That's the main
thing."

With this consoling thought he withdrew into his old stolid self, and
was ready to stand up and be shot if that was what they intended to do
with him. He did not blame anybody "because it was all a mix-up." If he
had chosen to save his brother he might have saved himself. The great
ship, with all her brave boys, would have gone down, perhaps, and his
brother would have seen to it that they two were saved.

Well, the ship had _not_ gone down, the brave boys who had jollied the
life out of him were on their way across country now to die if need be,
and who was he, Tom Slade, that he should be concerning himself as to
just how or when _he_ should die, or whether he got any credit or not,
so long as he had decided right and done what he ought to do?

He would rather have died honorably in the trenches, but if doing Uncle
Sam a good turn meant that he must die in disgrace, why then he would
die in disgrace, that was all.

The point was the _good_ turn. Once a scout, always a scout.

No one spoke to him all through the day--not even his brother. He heard
the hurried comings and goings on the deck, the creaking of the big
winches as bag after bag of wheat, bale after bale of cotton, was swung
over and lowered upon the brick quay. The little French children who
made the neighborhood a bedlam with their gibberish and the outlandish
clatter of their wooden shoes; the women who sat in their windows
watching these good things being unloaded, as Santa Claus might unload
his pack in the bosom of some poor family; the United States officers
who were in authority at the port, and all the clamoring rabble which
made the ship's vicinity a picnic ground, did not know, of course, that
it was because the captain's mess boy had made a discovery an