"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. CHAPTER XIII ROY'S TRAIL As for Roy, he went home feeling heavy of heart, but he was not sorry for what he had said. He had known that Tom had been slipping away from the troop and that his interest in the old associations had waned ever since his return from France. But that Tom should have lied to him and that he should use Temple Camp and that old beloved spot up on the hill for new friends, deliberately giving them precedence over these companions of his real scouting days--_that_ Roy could not stand. And he told himself that he was through with Tom, even as Tom was through with the troop.