"I never told you you should lie," said Tom with straightforward simplicity, "and I admit I forgot about the cabins. I was away two summers. I had a lot of different things to think about. I got shell-shocked the very same night I met that fellow, and that's got something to do with it, maybe. But I wouldn't stand here, I wouldn't, and try to prove that I didn't tell a lie. If you want to think I did, go ahead and think so. And if the rest of the troop want to think so, let them do it. If anybody says I forgot about the scouts, he lies. And you can tell them they won't lose anything, either; you can tell them I said so. I ain't changed. Didn't I—didn't I ride my motorcycle all the way from Paris to the coast—through the floods—didn't I? Do you think it's going to be hard to make everything right? I—I can do anything—I can. And I didn't lie, either. You go up to Temple Camp on the first of August like you—like we—always did; that's all I say."
He was excited now, and his hand trembled, and Roy looked at him a bit puzzled, but he was neither softened nor convinced. "Didn't you as much as say you didn't know anything about who made that application—didn't you?" Roy demanded.
"I said it good and plain and you can go and tell them so, too," Tom said.
"And you do know this fellow named Barnard, don't you?"
"I know him and he saved my life," Tom said, "and if you——"
"Going up," the colored boy called again.
And the young fellow, scout and soldier, who would not bother to prove his truthfulness to his old companion and friend, was gone. He had hit his own trail in his own way, as he usually did; a long devious, difficult, lonesome trail. The clearly defined trail of the sidewalk leading to the troop room, where a few words of explanation might have straightened everything out, was not the trail for Tom Slade, scout. He would straighten things out another way. He would face this thing, not run away from it, just as he had set his big resolute mouth and faced Pete Connigan. They would lose nothing, these boys. Let them think what they might, they would lose nothing. To be falsely accused, what was that, provided these boys lost nothing? That was all that counted. What difference did it make if they thought he had lied and deceived them, so long as he knew that he had not?
And what a lot of fuss about three cabins! Had he not the power to straighten out his own mistake in the best possible way—the scout way? And how was that? By going to Mr. Burton and taking the matter up and perhaps causing disappointment to those boys out in Ohio, for the sake of these boys in Bridgeboro? Robbing Peter to pay Paul?
Perhaps Mr. Burton would have done that, under all the circumstances. Perhaps Mr. John Temple, head of the whole shebang, would have approved this—under the circumstances. Perhaps the average clerk would have proposed this; would have suggested hitting this convenient little trail, about as short and prosy as a back alley. All you need on that trail is a typewriter machine. Perhaps Tom Slade was not a good clerk. His way out of the difficulty was a longer and more circuitous way. But it was the scout way. He was a scout and he hit the long trail.