"Nothing then," said Tom, "only I knocked him into the gutter. I got arrested."
They came out into the brighter light and clearer air of Main Street, and now the good scout trail, which indeed had not disappointed him, led them toward the quiet river and the willows and the hilly banks and across the bridge, from which he showed her the troop's cabin boat (soon to be plastered with Liberty Loan posters), and into the rural quiet of East Bridgeboro.
"I said it was a trail," said Tom.
"Yes?"
"I mean everything you do—kind of. It's just a trail. You don't know where it'll take you."
"It's just brought you back to the same place, hasn't it?" she said.
"But it won't stop," said Tom. "It don't make any difference, anyway, as long as you hit the right one. Once I thought it was kind of a crazy notion about everything you do being a trail. But now I know different. And if you do the wrong thing, you get on the wrong trail, that's all. Maybe you don't understand exactly what I mean."
"I do understand."
"It's brought me right back to where I'm talking to you again the same as on Registration Day. So you see it's a good trail. I got a kind of an idea that there can be a trail in your brain—like.—Often I think of things like that that I can't make other people understand—not even Roy sometimes.—I guess maybe girls understand better."
"Maybe," she said. "Do you see I'm wearing the little badge you gave me yet?"