Yes, they would all be on the hill together, save one, and they would be friends and there would be some great times. They would all hike up the mountain trail, all save one, and see Devil's Pool up there. Tom hoped that Roy would surely show Barnard and his troop that interesting discovery which he and Roy had made. The hard part was already attended to--making Margaret and Mr. Burton keep still. And, as usual, Lucky Luke's part was the easiest part of all--just building three cabins and going away. It was a cinch. "Shall I build a camp-fire?" he asked of Uncle Jeb. And so, in the waning twilight, Tom Slade, liar and forgetter of his friends, built a camp-fire, on this first night of his lonely sojourn at Temple Camp. And he and Uncle Jeb sat by it as the night drew on apace, and it aroused fond memories in Tom, as only a camp-fire has the magic to do, and stilled his jangling nerves and made him happy. "In about a month there'll be a hundred fellows sitting around one like this," he said. "En that Peewee kid'll be trying to defend hisself agin Roay's nonsense," Uncle Jeb remarked. "I ain't going to stay to be assistant camp manager this season," Tom said; "I'm going back to work. I'm having my vacation now. I kind of like being alone with you." "What is them shell-holes?" Uncle Jeb asked. "Yer got catched into one, huh?" And then, for the first time since Tom had returned from France, he was moved to tell the episode which he had never told the scouts, and which he had always recalled with agitation and horror. Perhaps the camp-fire and Uncle Jeb's quiet friendliness lulled him to repose and made him reminiscent. Perhaps it was the letter from Barnard. "That's how I got shell-shocked," he repeated. "When you get shell-shocked it doesn't show like a wound. There's a place named Veronnes in France. A German airman fell near there. It was pretty near dark and it was raining, but anyhow I could just see him fall. I could see him falling down through the dark, like. I was on my way back to the billets for relief. I had to go through a marsh to get to that place where he fell. I thought I'd sink, but I didn't. "When I got there I saw his machine was all crumbled up, and he was all mixed up with the wires and he was dead. I was going to give him first aid if he wasn't. But anyway, he was dead. So then I searched him and he had a lot of papers. Some of them were maps. I knew it wouldn't be any use to take them to billets, because the wires were all down on account of the rain. So I started through the marshes to get into the road to Rheims. Those marshes are worse than the ones we have here. Sometimes I had to swim. It took me two hours, I guess. Anyway, if you _have_ to do a thing you can do it.