TOM STARTS FOR HOME
There was nothing now to keep Tom at Temple Camp, yet there was nothing now to take him home, either. Nothing, indeed, except his work. The bottom seemed to have dropped out of all his plans, and he lingered on his lonely hilltop for the remaining day or two before the unsuspecting tenants of this remote little community should arrive.
Of course he might have stayed and enjoyed his triumph, but that would not have been Tom Slade. He had not forgotten those stinging and accusing words of Roy's that morning when they had last met. He did not remember them in malice, but he could not forget them, and he did not wish to see Roy. We have to take Tom Slade as we find him.
In those last hours of his lonely stay he did not go down much into camp, for he wished to be by himself, and not to have to answer questions about his departed friend, toward whom, strange to say, he cherished a stronger feeling of attachment than before. He was even grateful to Thornton for perhaps saving him the humiliation of Margaret Ellison's refusing to go out with him in his boat. There was no telling what a girl might say or do, and at least he was well out of that peril....
He busied himself clearing up the litter about the new cabins and getting them ready for occupancy. On Saturday morning he went down and told Uncle Jeb that he was starting for home. He was greatly relieved that the old man did not ask any questions about his companion. Uncle Jeb was much preoccupied now with the ever-growing multitude of scouts and their multifarious needs, and gave slight thought to that little sprig of a camp up on the hill.
"En so yer ain't fer stayin', Tommy? I kinder cal'lated you'd weaken when the time come. Ain't goin' ter think better of it, huh?" The old man, smiling through a cloud of tobacco smoke, contemplated Tom with shrewd, twinkling, expectant eyes. "Fun's jest about startin' naow, Tommy. 'Member what I told yer baot them critters. Daont yer go back on account of no gal."
"I ain't going back on account of a girl," said Tom.
"What train yer thinkin' uv goin' daon on?" the old man asked.
"I'm going to hike it," Tom said.
Uncle Jeb contemplated him for a moment as though puzzled, but after all, seeing nothing so very remarkable in a hike of a hundred and fifty miles or so, he simply observed. "Yer be'nt in no hurry ter get back, huh? Wall, yer better hev a good snack before yer start. You jest tell Chocolate Drop to put yer up rations fer ter night, too, in case you camp."
The guests at Temple Camp paid no particular attention to the young fellow who was leaving. He had not associated with the visiting scouts, and save for an occasional visit to his isolated retreat, where they found little to interest them, he had been almost a stranger among them. Doubtless some of them had thought him a mere workman at the camp and had left him undisturbed accordingly.
It was almost pitiful, now that he was leaving, to note how slightly he was known and how little his departure affected the general routine of pleasure. A few scouts, who were diving from the spring board paused to glance at him as he rowed across the lake and observed that the "fellow from up on the hill" was going away. Others waved him a fraternal farewell, but there was none of that customary gathering at the landing, which he had known in the happy days when he had been a scout among scouts at his beloved camp.
But there was one scout who took enough interest in him to offer to go across in the rowboat with him, on the pretext of bringing it back, though both knew that it was customary to keep boats on both sides of the lake. This fellow was tall and of a quiet demeanor. His name was Archer, and he had come with his troop from somewhere in the west, where they breed that particular type of scouts who believe that actions speak louder than words.
"Did that job all by yourself, didn't you?" he asked as they rowed across. He looked a Tom curiously.
"A friend of mine helped me," Tom said; "he's gone home."
"Why didn't you hit into the main road and go down through Catskill? You're likely to miss the train this way."
"I'm going to hike home," Tom said.
"Far?"
"In Jersey, about twenty miles from the city."
"Some jaunt, eh?" Archer inquired pleasantly.
"I don't mind it," Tom said.
"What are you goin' home for?"
"Because I want to; because I'm finished," Tom said.
This ended the talk but it did not end Archer's rather curious study of Tom. He said little more, but as he rowed, he watched Tom with an intense and scrutinizing interest. And even after Tom had said good-bye to him and started up the trail through the woods, he rowed around, in the vicinity of the shore, keeping the boat in such position that he could follow Tom with his eyes as the latter followed the trail in and out among the trees.
"Humph," he said to himself; "funny."
What he thought funny was this: being an observant scout he had noticed that Tom carried more rations than a scout would be likely to take on a long hike, through a country where food could easily be bought in a hundred towns and villages, and also that one who limped as Tom did should choose to go on a hike of more than a hundred miles.
A scout, as everybody knows, is observant. And this particular scout was good at arithmetic. At least he was able to put two and two together....