"The idea! Of course she would." So, to please his mother, Roscoe took off Uncle Sam's service coat, put on a kitchen apron, and went into his little familiar dark closet to wrestle with chemicals. And there again, in the dim light of the red lantern, and the deathlike quiet, he saw that face--with the cut and the thick, disordered hair, and the big, tight-set mouth. "You can see yourself it wouldn't do for anybody to know," he fancied the lips saying. "If you told, it would spoil it all----" "I won't spoil it," Roscoe mumbled, as if he were doing the shadowy presence a great favor. Private Bent, who was going to "can the Kaiser," was glad to get out of that dark, stuffy place. In the afternoon he went down into the cellar to grease and cover up his motorcycle in anticipation of his long absence "over there." This would be his last chance to do it, unless he got up very early in the morning. But then he would be an hour over his leave in getting back to camp late to-night on a milk train. A soldier's honor must not be sullied by a stolen hour.... And there again Roscoe Bent saw that face. It was a little more than a face this time. He could almost have sworn that he saw the figure of Tom Slade standing over in the dark corner near the coal bins; and as Roscoe, kneeling by his motorcycle, fixed his eyes upon this thing another sentence ran through his thoughts: "Those secret service fellows--do yer think I'd let them get yer? Do you think because you made fun of me...." He tried to stare the apparition down, but it would not disappear--not until he went over to it and saw that it was just a burlap bag full of kindling wood, with James, the furnace man's, old felt hat thrown upon it. "I--I know what it means, all right," he muttered; "it means he's dead." After supper he parted his wavy blond hair, and his mother brushed his uniform while he stood straight as an arrow, his handsome head thrown back. Then his father proudly helped him into his big military coat and he started for East Bridgeboro, which was across the river. The new Y. M. C. A. hall was not over there, but he was going there first, just the same. "Have you got the print?" his mother called after him. "Sure." "The one holding the gun? You look so soldierly and brave in that!" He laughed as he went down the steps. But presently he became moody and preoccupied again. "If Mr. Ellsworth hadn't dragged me into this thing," he said to himself, "it wouldn't be so bad. It gets my goat to stand up there and shoot off about honor and all that sort of thing. But I can't do anything else now. I'm not going to spoil it all. It can't make any difference to Tom now--he's out of the game. He's through with the scouts, and he's through with Bridgeboro--dead, I'm afraid. And if I just keep my mouth shut, it'll be doing just what he wanted me to do; it was _his_ idea."