"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 authorizing him to repeat it, that he could not forget or forgive. "_You can tell them that I did not know anything about them if you want to_." And all the while he, Tom, had known this Barnard, or whatever his name was, and had fixed things so that he and Barnard might be together at Temple Camp. Barnard was a grown-up fellow, Roy told himself, and a soldier, and he didn't exactly blame Tom, but.... And then their trails crossed again, right there at the foot of the elevator shaft, where Tom was waiting to go up. Roy's first impulse was to brush past his friend saying nothing, but when he had all but reached the door he wheeled about and said, "If you want to hand out any lies to the troop, you'd better do it yourself; I'm not going to do it for you."