eason," said Tom.

"You bet your life you did," Roy said, "and it shows you're a scout.
Once a scout, always a scout; you can't get away from that, Tomasso."

"Maybe you'll find that out," Tom said, his meaning, as usual, a little
cloudy.

"I don't have to find it out, Tom," Roy said. "Don't you suppose I know
where you stand? Do you think I'll ever forget how you and I hiked
together, and how we camped up on my lawn together, when you first got
to be a scout--do you think I will? I always liked you better than any
fellow, gee whiz, that's sure. And I know you think more of us than you
do of any one else, too. Don't you?"

"I got to go and mail this letter," Tom said.

"First you've got to say that you're for the scouts first, last and
always," said Roy gayly, and standing in his friend's path.

Tom looked straight at him, his eyes glistening.

"Do you have to ask me that?" he said.

And then was when the trails went wrong, and didn't cross right and come
out right. Roy went up in the elevator to get some circulars from Temple
Camp office, and Tom, on his way back from across the street went into
the bank to speak with Mr. Temple's secretary. And the girl spoiled
everything, as Peewee Harris always said that girls are forever doing.

She was in a great hurry to get the cover off her machine and other
matters straightened out, before Mr. Burton came in, so she did not
trouble herself to talk much with Roy. She did, however, think to call
after him just as he was leaving and he heard her words, with a kind of
cold chill, as he stepped into the elevator.

She called to him in her sweetest tone, "Isn't it too funny! A
scoutmaster, named Barnard, from out in Ohio who is going to be up at
camp knew Tom in France. Won't they have a perfectly _scrumptious_
vacation together, talking about old times?"

CHAPTER XII

THE LONG TRAIL

"You can tell them whatever you want to. You _can tell them that I
didn't know anything about them_ if you want to. I don't care what you
tell them." These were the words that rang in Roy Blakeley's mind as he
went down in the elevator, and they made him sick at heart. That Tom had
so much forgotten about the troop, _his_ troop, as to assign their three
cabins to strangers--that Roy could overlook. He could not understand
it, but in his fondness for Tom, he could overlook it, as his talk with
Tom had proved.

But that Tom should lie to him and make him a party to that lie by
a